The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureTheatre

Wasted at Southwark Playhouse online

Wasted at Southwark Playhouse online | Theatre review
5 May 2020
Michael Willoughby
Avatar
Michael Willoughby
5 May 2020

If you are going to invent the past, then you might as well reinvent the musical while you are at it. 2018’s Wasted, with music by Christopher Ash, book and lyrics by Carl Miller, reimagines the lives of the Brontë sisters as a lively rock gig in a local pub. 

Dreary, disease-ridden Haworth is the setting – but you wouldn’t know it from the bare stage. Yorkshire-moored Charlotte, Anne, Emily (and struggling, addicted artistic wannabe brother Branwell) grab mics on leads to sing in every genre from punk to emo via gospel. They keep their personal effects and props in aluminium suitcases and the stage becomes strewn with sheet music as their literary output ramps up. 

Happily, the musical prowess of the cast – and the strength of Miller’s lyrics, in particular – bear the demands made of them. The parts where no one is singing are few and far between and more plot could have helped.

Miller is also able – indeed required, since so little is accurately known about the provincial foursome – to create individual characters for each sibling. Natasha Barnes holds the show together as the maternal, ordinary, yet driven genius Charlotte, a writer who doubles down on her book’s first failure to find a publisher – even a vanity publisher! – and goes on to write Jane Eyre. Eventually, she disregards her own advice and marries a cleric. Emily “Wuthering Heights” Bronte (Siobhan Athwal) is somewhat unsurprisingly portrayed as loopy and romantic, singing of being “the first goth.” She has strongest stage presence, at least from behind my computer screen. Anne’s character is less defined, as, portrayed by Molly Lynch, she heads towards born-again hellfire religious fervour. Her high point comes in singing disillusion with a local preacher who infected his wife with VD. Matthew Jacobs Morgan’s addict Branwell is the character most easy to identify with as he tragicomically seeks fame and fortune in painting, writing and other endeavours he is unsuited for. He is almost loveable. He is also a constant reminder of the patriarchy and its mediocrity, or why the three sisters had to publish under male noms de plume. 

The Wasted of the title refers to the lives of the sisters and, presumably, Branwell – wasted in Haworth, ministering to the rural poor, desperately seeking junior churchmen  – anyone! – to marry. They were all dead before 40. 

Wasted is a bracing concoction, more Hedwig than High Society. Out of time it may be, but having the quartet played by a young, ordinary cast somehow helps give a grimy reality to the Brontë myth that inspired it. 

★★★★★

Michael Willoughby
Photo: Helen Maybanks

Wasted is available to stream on Southwark Playhouse’s website now. For further information visit the theatre’s website here.

Related Itemsfeaturedreview

More in Theatre

The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre

★★★★★
Natallia Pearmain
Read More

Dirty Dancing the Movie in concert at Apollo Theatre

★★★★★
Jim Compton-Hall
Read More

My Fair Lady at the London Coliseum

★★★★★
Michael Higgs
Read More

“When you’re presented with different dilemmas in life, you respond accordingly”: Debbie Kurup on The Cher Show

Mae Trumata
Read More

2:22 A Ghost Story at Criterion Theatre

★★★★★
Michael Higgs
Read More

The House of Shades at Almeida Theatre

★★★★★
Csilla Tornallyay
Read More

Grease at Dominion Theatre

★★★★★
Cristiana Ferrauti
Read More

House of Ife at Bush Theatre

★★★★★
Selina Begum
Read More

Banter Jar at Lion & Unicorn Theatre: “An authentic and timely one-woman show”

★★★★★
Jessica Wall
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Theatre review

Michael Willoughby

Wasted

★★★★★

Price

Free

Links & directions

TwitterInstagramFacebookWebsiteMap

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Albert Adrià reopens Enigma on 7 June as a “fun-dining” restaurant and cocktail bar
    Food & Drinks
  • Paolo Nutini at the 100 Club
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Crimes of the Future: Three new clips from David Cronenberg’s dystopian body horror film
    Cannes
  • The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Plan 75
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • November (Novembre)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Forever Young (Les Amandiers)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • “Ruben is wonderful at picking holes in our behaviour and our egos”: Woody Harrelson, Ruben Östlundand and cast at the Triangle of Sadness press conference
    Cannes Film Festival 2022
  • Summer Scars (Nos Cérémonies)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Holy Spider (Les Nuits de Mashad)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Emergency
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Men
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Triangle of Sadness
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Aftersun
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Paris Memories (Revoir Paris)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

How the hospitality industry are fighting the Covid-19 crisis
Camino Skies | Movie review