A fire... and Bertha Mason

Let's first begin with some terrible news. A couple of days ago we announced the premiere of an opera rock based on Wuthering Heights in Córdoba, Argentina. Well, today we read in several Argentinian newspapers (for instance, La Nación) how the Comedia Theatre burnt down just yesterday. Costumes, sets, musical instruments... everything has been lost. You can send a message of support to the people involved on the production's blog.

Fortunately, the rest of news today have a more ludic side:

It was to be expected: after Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë (race horses) now arrives Charlotte Brontë. The Independent (Ireland) talks about the upcoming Derby Festival and publishes this cryptic Brontë reference:

Like Elletelle, You'resothrilling also travelled to Ascot, but unlike Ger Lyons' charge, the Aidan O'Brien filly found one too good in Nijoom Dubai in the Albany Stakes. But the form is rock solid and unless either debutants Charlotte Bronte or Listen are very precocious, then it should be Saoirse Abu's race. (Thomas Kelly)

If you think naming a horse Charlotte Brontë is weird, just wait until you read the following. How about calling Bertha Mason a ...well... read for yourself:

BERTHA MASON IS in my kitchen, mashing acorn-size chunks of frigid butter into a bowl of flour, her sausagelike fingers working with twitchy intensity. (...)
This six-foot-six, 57-year-old hausfrau from Franklin, Minnesota (“just like Lake Wobegon, except we have a Wal-Mart and a crystal meth problem”), in her size-13 white pumps, white hose, and light blue polyester floral print dress, is the creation of 30-year-old writer, performer, and pastry chef Michael Bowen. He borrowed the name from Jane Eyre: Bertha Mason is Rochester’s mad first wife. Bowen, who read the book in college, says, “It was a bit of an in-joke with my friends that when you found love you either were a Jane pining for your Mr. Rochester or a Bertha—crazy, locked in the attic setting fires. I was always a Bertha.”(...)
For the modest fee of $50 per person (which can vary with the number of guests and the menu), Bertha will come to your kitchen and give you and your friends a unique baking lesson. Bertha provides the vintage aprons, polka music, board games, and the stories; hosts come up with the baking basics (flour, sugar, etc)—or not, though then the cost is greater. (...)
Bowen created Bertha in 1997, while he was working as prop master at the Bristol Valley Theater in Naples, New York. That was the summer before his senior year at Buffalo’s Canisius College, where his major was English and his minor was theater and creative writing. “We had a white-trash party, a chance for the actors and tech crew to blow off steam,” he says. “A fellow techie and I decided that we were going to lip-synch to a Patsy Cline song. In the costume shop I found a pair of glasses and a wig that fit my head. Thus Bertha was born.” (Justin Hayford in The Chicago Reader)

More brief items. Peter Hinchliffe posts on Open Writing about Patrick Brontë and gives some well-known and not so well-known anecdotes:

Patrick was no namby-pamby milksop. He was action man, a real live hero. In the present day he would probably have featured in dramatic newspaper headlines. (Read more)

The Baltimore Sun publishes another review of the film Evening where again Wuthering Heights is mentioned.

Evening comes off as sort of a Wuthering Heights-in-the-Hamptons, with a heavy dose of mother-daughter relationships thrown in. (Chris Kaltenbach)

Finally, Ela, Ele e O Género reviews Wuthering Heights in Portuguese and Aquatique Jane Eyre 2006.

Categories: In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Patrick Brontë, Theatre, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights