As a drama about the literary canon’s most famous sisters, Underdog explores the prickly edges of competitive sisterhood, first with a passing jibe at Jane Austen (for making it on to a banknote), then a fuller indictment by Charlotte (Gemma Whelan) who, in scarlet period dress and gen Z boots, tells us: “Young women judge older women more harshly than anybody else … They are conditioned to.”
Sarah Gordon’s play deals with writerly competition between the sisters themselves, although it is Charlotte who is most preoccupied by it. The older sister is a maternal figure to younger Anne (Rhiannon Clements) but also a ruthless rival when Anne’s literary fame risks eclipsing hers, and knifes both sisters strategically while speaking of sorority.
Directed with pace by Natalie Ibu, it is a knowing period-modern mashup, joshing in tone and taking a risk in turning Charlotte into an unlikable, albeit brutally honest, anti-heroine. In fact, this play seems to be more about Charlotte than the “other other” sister of its title. She is its central narrator, and we enter her mind over that of sweet, unassuming Anne and no-nonsense Emily (Adele James) while Branwell (James Phoon), their wayward drunken brother, barely gets a look-in beyond being drunken and wayward.
We hear how she edits Emily’s poetry after her death and prevents a reprint of Anne’s most popular novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, although we also see that beneath this lies great ambition and a firebrand yearning to become as immortal as the likes of Byron.
It certainly raises issues between Charlotte and Anne, but Emily seems little more than a foil to them rather than becoming a part of the competition, despite her magnum opus in Wuthering Heights, which brought its own scandal on publication.
Gordon’s script bounces along, albeit with some glaring modern-day lessons on masculinity and inequality tacked on. It is quick-witted and amusing though it never deepens enough for the emotional punches to land.
The cast is full of fire nonetheless and the exposure of envy and competition beneath the Brontës’ sisterliness is mirrored in the visual metaphor of Grace Smart’s set which consists of a verdant floral mound uprooted at the start to reveal dark matter beneath.
• At the Dorfman theatre, National Theatre, London, until 25 May
