The Heights in Glasgow

The Heights, is a work-in-progress production, based on Wuthering Heights, that was performed last week in The Arches, Glasgow:

Arches Company in Residence
Playgroup presents

The Heights
Work in Progress
Thurs 12th – Fri 13th July

The Heights is a work of extreme storytelling inspired by Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, exploring the idea that the metropolis represents to the modern imagination what the wild Yorkshire moors did to the 19th century: a site of alienation, unrequited love, and lost souls wandering alone at night.

Playgroup were formed in Cork, Ireland in 2002. Most recently they presented The Art of Swimming as part of Arches Live 2006.

Director: Tom Creed
Dramaturg: Lynda Radley
Composer: Michael John McCarthy
Cast includes: Hilary O’Shaughnessy

Today, The Herald publishes a review:

Rating: ***

Kate Bush got it right when, aged 19, she condensed Emily Bronte's doomed moors-set romance into a four and a half minute pop classic. The young Cork-based Playgroup company don't quite go that far in this work in progress developed over a two-week residency at the Arches, but they come pretty close. More show and tell than show per se, this is a 35-minute presentation concerning what may or may not be required to put on something that could eventually end up as a finished product of The Heights.

The result is a self-referencing sketch-book juxtaposition between out-front contemporary reworkings of the piece's source material set against deadpan folksy renditions of Bonnie Tyler's bombastic smash hit, Total Eclipse of the Heart and, yes, Kate Bush's precocious mini masterpiece. The image of street corner buskers is all too appropriate.

While one could question the necessity of showing such developing work on a public platform, let alone charging eight quid for the privilege, it will be fascinating to see the finished whole when the company return. As speculative as any interpretation is just now, one can imagine director Tom Creed and his bright if at times rudderless young cast ripping up Bronte's set-text classic and injecting new life into it. (Neil Cooper)

Categories: Theatre, Wuthering Heights