Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended
"...I'd have settled for a show that actually created a credible milieu populated by women in whom I believe. Or a show that actually sheds light on its own questions. Yet thanks to the mixture of a troubled script and an unusually wobbly and inauthentic production from the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, "Bronte" feels like a long, ponderous plod."
Chicago Sun Times - Recommended
"...The sisters' distinct personalities are clearly limned in director James Bohnen's well-cast production. Charlotte (Susan Shunk, prim yet commanding) is the oldest and mostly overtly ambitious. She enjoys considerable celebrity for Jane Eyre and in many ways dictates the legacies of her sisters. (Shunk also does a fine job with the show's funniest scene -- Charlotte's hilarious acceptance of a marriage proposal.)"
Daily Herald - Recommended
"...Besides history lesson and literary homage, "Brontë" also stands as a testament to female empowerment and to the creative impulse (vividly expressed by set designer Tim Morrison's Yorkshire moors, which literally break through the walls of the Brontë home). Just as nature breaks its bonds to intrude upon domestic life, the artist shatters the bonds proscribed by gender and society to express herself."
SouthtownStar - Not Recommended
"...The production pokes along at such a sluggish pace that paying attention to "Bronte" is a struggle. That's a shame because the Bronte sisters deserve better."
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...Mostly it seems the subject matter overwhelmed Teale. John O’Keefe, another playwright obsessed with the family, penned a biodrama also entitled Bronte, which I saw in a production at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre in 2000. Like this one, that play contained a surfeit of detail. But O’Keefe managed to capture the delicate admixture of outsize imagination, longing, and mordant wit at the heart of the sisters’ best writing. Teale never achieves a similar distillation."
Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...Playwright Polly Teale's exhaustive research cannot be faulted, nor her prodigious admiration for her subjects--a circle encompassing, in addition to the intellectually gifted daughters of a self-educated Yorkshire clergyman of Rousseauian inclination, his unfortunate son, doomed to collapse under the pressure of an ill-assigned freedom enjoining him to pursue the goals of his whole spiritually-starved clan. But while the likelihood of anyone attending this Remy Bumppo Theatre production without a superficial cognizance of the Brontë canon is probably slight, Teale's abundance of detail packed into the abbreviated constraints of modern drama makes for several motifs better suited to the leisurely pace of a book, or to the swift transitions of a screenplay."
Chicago Free Press - Somewhat Recommended
"...A biography of the Brontë sisters—all three of them published authors (you only knew about two, didn’t you?)—would seem a natural fit for Remy Bumppo’s “think theater” mission. But playwright Polly Teale’s clunky interpretation of the semi-cloistered writers’ lives isn’t up to the company’s typical standards, and not even a dedicated ensemble can help."
Gay Chicago Magazine - Recommended
"...Scenic designer Tim Morrison renders the Brontes’ kitchen, the setting where nearly all the action takes place, with little more than a tape outline on the floor. Far from seeming without boundaries, the area feels appropriately constricted by the audience sitting close on three sides. The austerity of the kitchen is offset by a mural of rolling hills, which runs the length of the stage and busts through the kitchen’s lone wall. It provides a visual element of surrealism that nicely echoes the story."
EpochTimes - Recommended
"...This is a very intellectual play requiring deep concentration by the audience. Act one, which sets the premise must truly be watched closely or Act two will be lost. If you have never read the works of the Bronte's ( or seen the movies) it might be a good idea to read "Jane Eyre", or at least a condensed version. This is truly a romantic piece and from watching the audience, loved more by the women than the men, but it is striking in its direction and its acting. Tim Morrison's set has all the appearance of what we would expect and the overall production is sharp and well directed."
Copley News Service - Highly Recommended
"...The Remy Bumppo production is ornamented by superb performances from the three young actresses playing the sisters—Carrie A. Coon as the intense and withdrawn Emily, Susan Shunk as the more outgoing and cagey Charlotte, and Rachel Sondag as the patient Anne. All three draw the spectators into the world of the Bronte sisters with absolute authenticity."
Time Out Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...Polly Teale’s Brontë often feels like a History Channel primer, one in which disembodied voices narrate the action while thespians seen from the neck down act out the past. Alas, here those talking heads and body doubles are one and the same. A corset built for three, the play cinches the sisters Brontë into snugly fitted silhouettes and scarcely leaves them room to draw a breath."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...Remy Bumppo think theatre has mounted a theatrical work of art with their stellar production of Polly Teale’s Bronte. This play paints a vivid portrait that attempts to answer the question: How is it possible that three Victorian spinsters, living in isolation on the Yorkshire moors, could have written some of the most powerful and passionate fiction of all time? This stylistic drama, smartly directed by James Bohnen, aptly mirrors the bleak, austere existence of the three Bronte sisters in Britain in the 1840’s."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Somewhat Recommended
"...The unique theatrical style of this production described as a "shared experience" is not a concept that went over well in the action of the play. At the top of the play, the actors break the fourth wall and talk to the audience to set up what is about to come. Once the story actually starts, the women add their specific English accents and the play begins. The transition this way did not clarify what was going on, not to mention the fact that some of the actors played multiple roles which further confused matters. Whether it was said in the text of the story or not, I found it hard to be interested in the story at all."
