Why has the National engaged in this tedious act of defamation of the Brontës?

The Divine Mrs S is a backstage satire set in the year 1800, when flouncy costumes and elaborate English prose were common cultural ornaments. On press night the venue was full of resting actors and theatrical hangers-on who adored the show’s in-jokes and rehearsal-room wisecracks. Titus Andronicus is ‘an experimental play about a pie’, says an actor. Another thesp demonstrates how to enliven a dreary line by pretending that one’s character is in love.

The production looks immensely stylish and the company are clearly having a ball, but the ordinary punter may find it tiresome. A few minutes of pastiche is amusing but this lasts well over two hours and it takes nothing seriously. Even the deaths of Mrs S’s children are treated as an opportunity for our heroine, played by Rachael Stirling, to weep convincingly into a hanky.