We Are Three Sisters, Northern Broadsides, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk IN a nutshell, We Are Three Sisters transfers Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters from a Russian dacha to the wind-chastised Haworth Parsonage of the scribbling Bronte siblings.

It is not a far-fetched transposition, even if playwright Blake Morrison said “bonkers” when the Observer theatre critic Susannah Clapp first suggested the possibility of refracting the Bronte story through Chekhov’s play ten years ago. Chekhov, after all, had read Mrs Gaskell’s Bronte biography before penning his 1901 sister work.

Northern Broadsides artistic director Barrie Rutter later urged Morrison to think again and Blake’s sixth collaboration with the Halifax company duly emerged. The plays share three dutiful, diligent sisters beavering away out of the bright lights with a wastrel brother under the same roof, and on to that framework Morrison builds a play that does not purloin characters directly from the Chekhov text, and so a scholarly knowledge of its intricacies is not required.

Instead, he finds counterparts drawn from Morrison’s research of their letters, works and biographies and condenses them into a concertina of encounters in order to examine what turned Charlotte (Catherine Kinsella), Emily (Sophia Di Martino) and Anne (Rebecca Hutchinson) into writers.

Or, when there is no direct equivalent, in the case of the sisters’ father, the Irish parson Patrick Bronte (Duggie Brown), Morrison nevertheless seamlessly fits him into the story, here an often humorous figure of wise counsel yet oblivious to the candle-lit writing going on around him.

Joined by old maid Tabby (Eileen O’Brien), the sisters share the Haworth darkness with the male world of an educated but not all-seeing father and a libidinous, disruptive brother (the over-the-top Gareth Cassidy) besotted with Mrs Robinson (Becky Hindley), a married paramour as repulsive as her green dress.

Into their house come a lonely middle-aged Doctor (the outstanding John Branwell), pickled by drink in his pained frustration at his unrequited love for Anne; a love-sick young Curate (Marc Parry), moving from sister to sister with his gilded patter; and the vainglorious village Teacher (Barrie Rutter, who else!).

Amid the coughing and suffering that presages life’s short passage for the sisters, and the sound of the buffeting wind and the mason’s chisel chipping away at another grave, it is not all doom and gloom in Morrison’s play, despite the constant shadow of death. Far from it. Kinsell’s Charlotte may be the most stoic sister, but di Martino’s whistling, moorland-walking Emily and Hutchinson’s yearning Anne are both quick of wit.

Morrison enjoys playing the sisters off each other, especially in Charlotte’s less-than-flattering assessment of her sisters’ writing talents, and there is a particularly sharp moment when all three dismiss Jane Austen. “Where’s the fresh air [in her novels]?” they lament.

The humour is not of the satirical nature of Victoria Wood’s Bronteburgers monologue or Lip Service’s Withering Looks (which coincidentally plays Hull Truck next Wednesday to Saturday), but slightly ameliorates the dramatic punch of this nevertheless rounded, intelligent, beautifully written portrait of restless sisters caught between domestic routine and an escape through writing.

Charles Hutchinson