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.

“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 visits York Theatre Royal from Tuesday.

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’.”

The role of Emily goes to Sophie Di Martino in her Northern Broadsides debut. “I’m from the East Midlands, Nottingham, but I feel northern when I’m in London,” she says, aware that she may not be strictly northern.

“I was just really interested in the fact that someone has written a play about the Bronte sisters and also based it on The Three Sisters. Emily is such an interesting character as there’s not much out there about her because she was so secretive.

“There are a few books, like a biography I read called A Life Of Emily Bronte, but of course a lot of it is guess work from imagining what she’s like from Wuthering Heights.”

Sophie has read Wuthering Heights and seen the film version in which French actress Juliette Binoche played Cathy.

“But I never studied the Brontes at school and, to be honest, I didn’t know much about them before doing this play, so I’ve now become geeky about them since getting the part, and for women to be writing in the way they did at that time was incredible,” she says.

• Northern Broadsides present We Are Three Sisters at York Theatre Royal, November 22 to 26, 7.30pm plus 2pm, Thursday, and 2.30pm next Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk