Rivalries, putdowns, betrayals … director Natalie Ibu explains why she is thrilled to be making her National Theatre debut with an award-winning play about the famous writing sisters
Natalie Ibu is about to make her National Theatre debut directing a new play about the Brontë sisters, but the Kardashians keep creeping in. “I’m constantly comparing them, because they’re the ultimate disruptors – and they’re also three sisters with a brother that no one really remembers. We may not like what they stand for, but they are successful and exquisite at what they do,” she says.
Ibu is well aware that some will see this as an appalling slight against the 19th-century daughters of a country clergyman, who disrupted the canon by producing some of the most important novels in the English language. She means no disrespect, either to them or to those who know and revere their work, “but the idea that we can’t talk about the Kardashians in the same breath as the Brontës I find deeply offensive,” she says. “Our audiences are cultural consumers who go wherever they find something they like. I want them to be fans of theatre in the way that they’re a fan of Harry Styles.”
