A FEW years ago, a good friend of playwright Blake Morrison made a suggestion after seeing one of his stage adaptations for Northern Broadsides.

“Why not do a version of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters featuring Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte instead of Nata?” asked Susannah Clapp, the Observer theatre critic.

Susannah had what director Barrie Rutter called her “Road To Damascus” moment when watching The Three Sisters, noting the uncanny connections with the Brontes. “That was ten years ago,” says Barrie. “Blake is convinced he mentioned it to me at the time but he didn’t.

“But when I was at the BBC working on Othello, it was mentioned to me again that Susannah had had this idea, so without that moment of serendipity of being at the BBC that day… “Anyway, now here we are three years later doing this play, and we’re the ideal company to do the story of three Yorkshire sisters who are the best known in the world apart from Shakespeare’s three ‘weird sisters’ in Macbeth.”

Blake duly wrote We Are Three Sisters, whose premiere tour moves on to Scarborough tonight, with York Theatre Royal on the horizon next month.

He adds a touch of poetic licence to the nod to Chekhov to tell the tale of three remarkable young women who live their lives brightly against the backdrop of the dark, remote northern town of Haworth in 1848. In a gloomy parsonage where there are neither curtains nor comforts, Charlotte, Anne and Emily light up their world with outspoken wit, aspirations, dreams and ideas, and throughout their confined lives intensely lived, they write.

Blake was struck by how Chekhov’s play and the Brontes dovetailed so well. “Chekhov had read about the Brontes (probably in Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte) shortly before writing The Three Sisters; their story was clearly an influence on the play,” he says.

“So there are good reasons for transplanting the play to Haworth and for identifying the Serghyeevna sisters with the Brontes; they even have a troubled and self-destructive brother in common.

“Above all, I hope that, by taking a cue from Chekhov, the play will banish the gloom surrounding the Brontes and reveal the northern humour and resilience they showed, despite the ever-present threat of death and disease. In other words, I’d like to honour the truth of the Brontes while showing Charlotte, Emily, Anne, Branwell and Patrick as they’ve never been seen before.”

Explaining how the Brontes and Chekhov’s play overlap each other in Morrison’s play, Barrie says: “In terms of historical accuracy, we have to do it from the Bronte side first as you wouldn’t be able to please the Bronte Society otherwise. So the historical truth comes from historical letters and the play’s title comes from Charlotte’s letters to her publishers, saying ‘We are three sisters’.”

• Northern Broadsides presents We Are Three Sisters at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tonight until Saturday, and York Theatre Royal, November 22 to 26. Box office: Scarborough, 01723 370541; York, 01904 623568.