Wild and Knotty

We think is fair that, after this very negative review of the current York's performances of Wuthering Heights, we compensate with another one published on UK Theatre Network (the link has been provided by this anonymous BrontëBlog reader).

There are in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights all the elements of intense and spectacular drama. Jane Thornton's sensitive adaptation has pared down the action, eliminated the superfluous Lockwood and shared narrational duties among the cast. This works particularly effectively, especially when characters are relating the circumstances of their own lives - in the third person.
Lorna Ritchie's imaginative set resembles something like a ruined mill, its metal staircases and structures still festooned with remnants of wool. It is immensely atmospheric when the moon is rising and the wind howling, and a perfect place for the remorselessly harrowing events to unfold, as the 5-strong ensemble whisks the audience across the Yorkshire moors, down the generations and between the houses of the Earnshaws and Lintons.
Jessica Harris at times bears a marked resemblance to Emily Bronte as the two Catherines, mother and daughter, the one wayward and self-destructive, the other insouciant and repressed. Harris excels in both roles bringing to life Emily's belief that pain and suffering are an integral part of love.
What is Heathcliff: a monster or a martyr? Joel Fry hardly answers this and is certainly not the archetypal Heathcliff, if such exists, bearing in mind the role has been played by a variety of types from Olivier to Cliff Richard. Yet, he undoubtedly brings a sense of the 'moorish, wild and knotty' to which Emily referred.
The hard-working Marshall Lancaster superbly differentiates by voice and posture all the characters he plays, Catherine’s effete husband, Edgar Linton, Heathcliff's sickly offspring, Linton, the old man Earnshaw who precipitates the whole tragedy by introducing into his house the boy Heathcliff, a cuckoo in the nest, and Joseph the ancient retainer.
Nick Figgis modulates easily from the drunken Hindley, who brutalises Heathcliff, to his son, Hareton, who in turn is brutalised by Heathcliff; and the splendid Kate Ambler has equal facility in emotionally charging Isabella Linton, Frances and the ubiquitous Nelly Dean.
An exceptional feature is the interpolation of some of Emily's most haunting and profoundly moving poems, beautifully set to music by Richard Taylor and sung in parts by the cast. Nothing perhaps could better bring home to the audience the atmospheric tumult of Wuthering Heights, the product of Emily's fevered imagination.
Tautly directed by Sue Dunderdale, this ambitious adaptation of an English classic shouldn't be missed. (Andrew Liddle)

Categories: Theatre, Wuthering Heights