No moor, no more

York Theatre Royal's Wuthering Heights has a new (bad) review published in The York Press:

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SERIAL spoofing double act Lip Service mischievously sent up Wuthering Heights in Withering Looks; fellow jokers Oddsocks had Cathy and Heathcliff in a permanent strop on the Moors in a tinsel-and-tantrum Christmas version a few years ago.
The jokes were intentional on those occasions, but how come sniggers could be heard at the York Theatre Royal press night on Tuesday? Such a response would have had Emily Bronte skipping supper once more for a lonely stomp across the heather.
Playright Jane Thornton may have cut her teeth on comedy, yet the reaction to Sue Dunderdale's ragged production of her 2003 adaptation was not born of Thornton's comedic prowess.
Granted, Marshall Lancaster's cameo characterisation of the perennially gloomy old Joseph - jaw set like Wildred Brambell's Steptoe - was intentionally humorous, and so too were the wimpy actions of the excellent Lancaster's weakling Linton.
However, it was the production's forlorn struggle for intense passion that sparked the dismissive half-time chatter over the scrum for free sausages and burgers. One name was on everyone's lips: Heathcliff, and not since Cliff Richard's hammy musical 11 years ago has an actor looked so uncomfortable in this elemental role.
Joel Fry was talent-spotted by Dunderdale while at RADA and is destined for his film breakthrough in 10,000 BC next year, but it could be another 10,000 years before he is asked back to York. He has the look of a young Jimi Hendrix, even dressing not unlike him, but he mumbled and shuffled and slouched, and his diction was as languid as his gait.
Almost perversely, Fry is at his loudest when singing flat on his back on Lorna Ritchie's bizarre set of strips of ripped sheets, metal steps and strands of wool, with not a Yorkshire moor in sight. Save for its sense of height and wind, it is as characterless as Fry.
Thornton says she focused on the passion in her adaptation, and the still inexperienced Fry needs to show a whole heap more, particularly as he is the only actor who plays just one role in this five-hander. He has to be the play's tempestuous force, around which everyone takes their turn to die, but he isn't.
Jessica Harris's Catherine Earnshaw/Catherine Linton lack variety of emotion and vocal tone, and she is too light. Yet Thornton's fast-moving script, with its multiple narrators and swift scene and costume changes, can work well, as proved by Nick Figgis and Kate Ambler joining Lancaster in rising above the problems.
Richard Taylor's musical settings of Bronte poems are a successful innovation, but no moor, no more, Wuthering Heights is a worrying low in a misfiring year at the Theatre Royal. (Richard Hutchinson) (Picture: Jessica Harris and Joel Fry in Wuthering Heights at York Theatre Royal) SOURCE

Check this and this previous posts for more reviews. This comment also provides a different and more positive view.

Some months ago we already published a review of the performances of Polly Teale's After Mrs. Rochester in the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Now the production has been performed in the Cave Hill campus, in Barbados and the Barbados Advocate talks about it:

Directed by Brian Heap, and featuring the University Players of the Mona Campus, the production looked at how easily one person's real life can be far more fantastic than fiction and how many times the most resonant fiction can function as an escape from a sordid life.
Both tragic 'and yet darkly funny' in subject matter the production was based on the life of eccentric Dominican novelist Jean Rhys. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea a book chronicling the story of the 'madwoman in the attic' character from Charlotte Brontë 's immortal Jane Eyre.
Hilary Nicholsan played the elderly Jean, a distinguished and yet dishevelled novelist cloistered in her Devon room, getting quietly drunk and narrating her life to the audience. At her side sat actress Nadia Khan, as Bertha Mason, insane, animalistic and wretched.
Khan's role is pivotal to the plot as both the character from Jane Eyre and Jean's own dark alter ego.
Rhys, just like the fictional Mason, grew up in the West Indies and later lived in England. Both women suffered poverty, injustice, and a dependence on men. Teale's plot suggests that Rhys, born Ella Rees Williams, had an obsession with the character because of their similarities.
Thus the audience of the play see young Ella played by Maylynne Walton reading Jane Eyre on one side of the stage, while several actors play out the scenes on the other half.
It is these meta-fictional aspects of the play that made After Mrs Rochester so complex and yet so engaging, for it questions the nature of history and of literature. Where exactly does the author begin to embellish historical fact and where exactly does reality and fiction separate?
In a country where the stories of important historical figures are still cloaked in legend (think Bussa, Rachel Pringle) this is especially fascinating.
Yet, one did not need to know anything about the two novels or about Rhy's life to enjoy the play, which ran along on very strong performances from most of the cast.
As a feminist theatre piece the women actors had far more to work with. Going from naïve 13-year old Rhys to the character in her mid-thirties Walton gave a nuance and complex performance. As the child she was able to convey Ella's awkwardness and her naiveté and later as the young woman she showed Rhys' narcissism, intelligence and deep insecurity. With an amazing control over her body language and voice Walton's performance was often riveting, tragic or amusing depending on what was needed.
So too Khan, who despite having her full head of hair cover her face for the two hours of the play still connected with the audience and Nicholsan who remained central, even as the narrator.
Student Nadean Rawlins switched from straight-backed maid Meta to childhood friend Tite so seamlessly you could believe that she was two actresses. Similarly Carla Moore fully embodied cynical British friend Maudie but did not seem as sparkling as Stella the wife of Author Ford Maddox Ford.
Noelle Kerr had some trouble projecting her voice as Jane Eyre, but was a dead-on with the accent as a young child and later as Jean's daughter.
This left male actors Karl Williams, Jean-Paul Menou and Rooney Chambers with just enough room for character development to deliver understated but believable performances.
Dark and moving, After Mrs Rochester was well worth the ticket price, Kudos to EBCCI for striving to bring good theatre both local and otherwise to the Barbadian audience. (Khalil Goodman) (Picture: Here cast members (from left) Karl Williams, Hilary Nicholson, Carla Moore, Nadian Khan and Maylynne Walton act out a scene.) SOURCE

Categories: Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights