The moor lark and other news

Very varied news today, and some certainly more interesting than others.

First of all, Jan Henson Dow has written a play called The Moor Lark which will be read at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. The details are as follows:

In the isolated village of Haworth, the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, create through their writings a world as wide as their imaginations. Their brother, Branwell, jealous of his sisters’ growing fame as novelists and poets, has turned to alcohol and opium to numb the feeling that he has squandered his own talents as poet and artist. Then, an unexpected visitor forces the rivalry into the open, thus leading to a tragic conclusion.

Performances will be Aug. 24-25 and Sept. 1. All readings are 10:15 a.m.
Audience feedback during the first two readings is often incorporated into the plays by the authors prior to the final readings.

We are hesitating whether to call the take on Branwell imaginative or typical. The unexpected visitor at least seems to be totally made up anyway. But at any rate it can be interesting.

To return to that kind of news which usually makes us laugh so much. This horoscope column writer is either very wrong or very cruel by stating the "truth" in such a veiled way:

The trick with Pisces is to merge without submerging your individual identities. If you can manage that, it's a Cathy-Heathcliff relationship that can last through eternity.

When will people actually read Wuthering Heights and find out that the kind of love Heathcliff and Cathy have might last for eternity but it's not the kind of love most people are looking for. We sympathise with the man who asked the question if he does know everything this answer implies.

And now for the Milville women. Don't worry, we hadn't heard of a place called Milville before but it seems Brontë movies are all the rage there. Both women are very aptly named for their favourites. First we have one Charlotte Johnson who likes Jane Eyre:

Charlotte Johnson doesn't have to think twice about her favorite love story.
That would be "Jane Eyre," the British film version of the movie, based on the great novel by Charlotte Bronte.
Her favorite scene:
"It's after she finds out that he is married and her world is devastated. She leaves, but she still loves him. Then, after a period of time, something happens that is drawing her back to him, and she goes back."
Johnson, a 68-year-old Millville resident, became so fixated with the romantic story that she used to reread the book about once every two years.

That's the way of a Brontë fan: saying everything to those who get the plot but tempting those who don't :)

And then one Cathy Gringer who likes Wuthering Heights:

Cathy Griner of Millville goes for a classic, "Wuthering Heights"
"There are many romantic, heart-wrenching scenes in this film, but the scene where Catherine (Merle Oberon) has died and Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) is at her bedside begging her to 'haunt him' and not to leave him in this dark alone where he cannot find her and reciting the famous line, 'I cannot live without my life -- I cannot die without my soul.' Now, that is what I call romantic."

Actually the quote belongs to the 1939 film were it was changed, we don't really know why, as the actual text says "I cannot live without my soul!".

Categories: In_the_News, Theatre,Jane_Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV,Wuthering_Heights, Fiction