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CHARLOTTE'S LETTERS by Jennifer O'Grady

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  • Justin Guidroz:
    26 Feb. 2024
    “ This play has been on my mind for almost five years now. Thought-provoking, expertly written, and thoroughly researched, O'Grady's exploration of genius in the midst of familial trappings is spellbinding. I will champion this play forever. ”
  • Christopher Soucy:
    12 Dec. 2023
    “ Jennifer O’Grady delivers a beautifully rendered glimpse into the lives of extraordinary people. I love imagining the day to day lives of famous influential figures, but in this piece, Jennifer gives us a world so defined that imagination is not necessary. I felt like a ghost watching from the corners of the Brontë sisters’ lives. “All feelings are good” struck me as I realized how O’Grady conducts the full orchestra of my emotions in a perfect symphony. ”
  • Ricardo Soltero-Brown:
    4 Dec. 2023
    “ Replete with historical dues and literary context, CHARLOTTE'S LETTERS is another fine component in Jennifer O'Grady's canon of artists-at-work during significant moments in their lives. (See: JUGGLING WITH MR. FIELDS) It was certainly delightful learning about the women behind so many important works of Western prose and their formidable years, but there is plenty of entertainment and drama in the sections involving Mrs. Gaskell and Meta, and how they work on framing the Brontë sisters. The language, the dialogue is simultaneously appropriate, rhapsodic, and accessible. The second half reaches a layer of dream-upon-dream that renders the play into resplendent heights. ”
  • Nora Louise Syran:
    29 Oct. 2023
    “ Lovely. I only wish I'd read this sooner. It works on so many levels. The frame narrative is beautifully rendered and creates a sense of a mystery, an 'enigma' in the biography to be solved which propels us along. Knowing the Bronte sisters Emily and Charlotte certainly adds to the enjoyment of this piece but the characters work on their own, apart from their fictional lives. Just beautiful. O'Grady captures the loneliness and the passion of Jane Eyre. Yes, I do like a happy ending, too. But one grounded in reality. Charlotte Bronte would be proud, I think, indeed. ”
  • Rachel Feeny-Williams:
    14 Jul. 2021
    “ I've never known a great deal about the Brontë sisters but this piece opened my eyes a new, which is always a great thing for theatre. Taking this interesting new perspective and drawing the audience in so that you can't help but want to know more. By the end I found myself wanting to research more about the sisters! A very well done piece. ”
  • Christine Foster:
    22 Apr. 2021
    “ 'All feelings are good. Including sadness'. Or so Charlotte tells the little daughter of her mentor in Brussels, a man she has come to love but can never have. O'Grady's is an elegant, insightful play about the inner life of the author of Jane Eyre and how she came to cope with her loneliness, her lack of life experience and her blighted opportunities with dignity and selflessness. The characters are warmly and delightfully drawn and the whole play is richly, if sadly, satisfying. ”
  • Lee R. Lawing:
    5 Apr. 2021
    “ Letters are so initiate and bring about such different emotions while holding them in hand. This is no different then O'Grady's play Charlotte's Letters. I love O'Grady's taking off some of the mystery to Charlotte Bronte as we sit and watch Elizabeth Gaskell's and her daughter piece together the life of someone so shy, but who like so many of us lived out life fully, and if not as she wanted entirely, because who knows what would happen to Charlotte in today's world, but who lived her life with such an eye on the world around her. ”
  • Chelsea Frandsen:
    26 Feb. 2021
    “ OH MY WOW!!!!(insert heart eyes here). Charlotte Bronte and her time in Belgium has always fascinated me, as well as Elizabeth Gaskell's fabulous biography of same. Jennifer O'Grady has crafted a beautiful love letter(no pun intended) to these two great women--one a writer, the other her biographer--and asks a question we should all be asking: is the "bald truth" always a good thing? I fell fast and hard for Heger just as Charlotte did and my heart broke for both of them. Stunning, meaty roles for women make this play an absolute winner! ”
  • Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn:
    26 Feb. 2021
    “ I, like many others, have a great love for the novel JANE EYRE. This play feels almost like a prequel. It shows us a love that is earned between Charlotte and Heger. And because it is earned it is that much more painful to watch it be torn away. I didn't expect to cry reading this, but here I am telling my own tears to "go away." But it seems this is a story that truly deserves them.
    Just lovely. ”
  • Claudia Haas:
    30 Jan. 2020
    “ A gorgeous layered play about love, duty, and memory. I was hooked from the lyrical opening through the end. What does a biographer owe her subject? Absolute truth (warts & all) or a truth ensconced in the mores of the times? I loved the mixture of “duties” required by Charlotte to family, work, and her calling combined with Gaskell’s duty as biographer and protector-of-reputation. There is irony that while Gaskell cleansed Chatlotte’s reputation, she also preserved it. O’Grady seamlessly puts together a story of complicated women navigating a time that was not kind to them. ”

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