WITHERING LOOKS

by Lipservice
Dukes Theatre, Lancaster
Thursday 3 - Saturday 5 May 2007

Reviewed by Jane Sunderland

I first became aware of Lipservice’s Withering Looks two years ago at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The problem was, having been a Bronte fan since the age of 10, being a West Riding of Yorkshire girl myself, and a frequent visitor to Haworth and the moors to boot, I thought I just wouldn’t be able to bear seeing them sent up – what sacrilege! (I had entertained no such qualms about Lipservice’s very funny Very Little Women.) So I didn’t see them then – but I’m glad to be able to say I have now.

The Brontes, their extreme lives, and their extreme, dramatic, unique novels are of course ripe for a spoof – as is the whole Bronteana industry (lampooned mercilessly), the speculation surrounding what these famous literary sisters might really have been like, and the relationship between their lives and work. Top Withens on Haworth Moor behind Penistone Hill (deliberately mispronounced in the show) is popularly equated with Wuthering Weights – but only because Charlotte’s friend the writer Mrs Gaskell thought that Emily might have had the site (not the building) in mind when writing Wuthering Heights. And so we are shown a miniature, not-to-scale hurricane lamp of the sort Emily would have used, had she used a hurricane lamp … you get the idea.

Spoof comedy is not to everyone’s taste (whatever the target), and different bits of a spoof will appeal to different people. When Audrey and Olivia metamorphose into old and newly arrived ghosts on Haworth Moor, I felt the show went off the boil somewhat. But the audience was thoroughly appreciative and entertained and there was no shortage of laughter. That includes the maniacal laughter (remember Bertha Rochester?) by Noreen Kershaw, the clearly multi-talented Director.

The writer-actors Maggie Fox (playing Audrey playing Charlotte) and Sue Ryding (playing Olivia playing Emily) are as unique as their subjects. More importantly, they are genuinely funny, and Maggie Fox’s facial expressions (including some very, very withering looks) are one reason why. In fact the non-verbal humour is some of the best, in particular the scene when the sisters are sitting side by side writing their own – and each other’s- books in concert, or perhaps the gale that comes in consistently every time the parsonage door is opened. But the jokes are good too – so that we hear Lottery Funding has been applied for, for little Anne (who, in this production, is sadly always out – or dead).

The finale - the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights with Audrey playing Laurence Olivier playing Heathcliff and Olivia playing Merle Oberon playing Cathy, complete with Received Pronunciation versions of Yorkshire accents - is a delight. Best of all, though, has to be the humour surrounding doing a spoof itself – hence the pause when Nelly the servant tells Charlotte that she’s looking forward to a chat with Emily (remember there are only two actors ….)

It wasn’t too hard, then, to enjoy Withering Looks. In these post-modernist, irony-laden days, why shouldn’t you be able to enjoy the spoof as much as the original? I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to come to this conclusion about this show – especially as it’s even been performed at the Bronte Parsonage.

© Jane Sunderland 3/5/07

Dukes Theatre, Friday May 4 and Saturday May 5 (8 p.m.)

Tickets £15.50 (£12.50 concessions)
Friends and family ticket (5+ people) £11.00 each

Lipservice website

From Lipservice (audio)

About Lipservice

Brontë Parsonage Museum

Virtual Lancaster’s Review of Lipservice's Horror For Wimps performed at the Dukes in March 2006

Virtual Lancaster’s Review of ‘Watch Her Now’ (a one-woman play about Charlotte Bronte and her writing, written and performed by Prudence Edwards)