Rivalries, putdowns, betrayals … director Natalie Ibu explains why she is thrilled to be making her National Theatre debut with an award-winning play about the famous writing sisters
debut directing a new play about the Brontë sisters, but the Kardashians keep creeping in. “I’m constantly comparing them, because they’re the ultimate disruptors – and they’re also three sisters with a brother that no one really remembers. We may not like what they stand for, but they are successful and exquisite at what they do,” she says.
The underdog is Anne Brontë, who died at just 29 having never quite achieved the success of her two older sisters. The play explores the role that sibling rivalry played in her eclipse, particularly with Charlotte, who altered Emily’s poetry, and is known to have suppressed Anne’s novelIn a key scene, Anne berates her sister for gazumping her novel Agnes Grey with Jane Eyre. “Charlotte has this great line, ‘I’m telling you, the novels could not be more different.
Her school careers advisor pointed her towards a degree in theatre with arts management, which gave her an all-round grounding but not in the sort of theatre she wanted, as it was focused on performance art. Undeterred, she applied for a positive discrimination grant from the Arts Council and landed a trainee directorship at Nottinghamshire-basedjust as she was completing her final thesis. She attributes her single-mindedness to her childhood.