Wuthering Bollywood

More information about the Wuthering Heights theatrical adaptation à la Bollywood by the Tamasha Company. The Sunday Herald publishes the following:

WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Emily Bronte's gothic tale of wild, dark, passionate love, has inspired everything from Kate Bush's songs to Gordon Brown's sense of identity. But this classic of English literature is about to undergo its most radical transformation yet: it is to be remade for the stage as a Bollywood musical.
Acclaimed writer Deepak Verma and theatre company Tamasha are swapping Yorkshire's blasted heaths and Victorian Britain's hierarchical society for the Rajasthan desert and India's strict caste system in a production that is due to come to the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow in the spring.
According to the producer, Bronte's gloomy story of the destructive love affair between the outcast Heathcliffe and prototype wild child Catherine Earnshaw is closer to the upbeat spirit of a Bollywood musical than most people think.
"It is not like putting a square peg into a round hole," says Kristine Landon-Smith, Tamasha's artistic director. "I thought of the harsh landscape in the original book, and if you put some swelling Bollywood music behind it you already almost have a Bollywood film. It just felt to me that it was a perfect match. There are points where the emotions get so high that they have to sing instead of speak. It's natural why it should be a musical."
Previously, Tamasha have transposed the works of French novelist Emile Zola to an Asian setting, but this is the London-based company's first attempt to marry a musical to classic literature.
Rather than being a "high-octane and colourful" production, Landon-Smith said it will have a "moody, Chekovian feel".
"But we're not going to go too far," she said. "The production has to meet some of the expectations for a feel-good Bollywood musical."
The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth described the Bollywood Wuthering Heights as "a fairly radical reinterpretation".(...)
"I think it is a fantastic thing and we very much support it," said Andrew McCarthy, director of the museum. The museum is in the middle of a racially diverse area. McCarthy hopes this new production will help break down the preconceptions attached to the Bronte's work.
"One of the difficulties we have in the museum is we are traditionally seen as a very white, middle-class visitor attraction and anything that can change that image is very much to be welcomed," he said.
Literature academics have also welcomed the adaptation.
Sarah Edwards, professor of Victorian and Edwardian literature at the University of Strathclyde, said moving the book's setting from Yorkshire to India is a great way to explore Heathcliffe's racial heritage. In the book he is described as being dark and swarthy, with many literary historians believing Emily Bronte may have conceived him as a Romany.
Like Landon-Smith, Edwards said Bollywood is a natural home for Bronte's tale.
"Bollywood is quite melodramatic and melodrama encompasses both very positive and negative emotions," she said. "Wuthering Heights is very gothic, and gothic is very melodramatic, like Bollywood.
"They both deal with quite stereotyped characters. But a lot depends on the director and the casting. If it's not done well, it could be overblown."
Tamasha's production of Wuthering Heights debuts at the Oldham Colosseum next March before touring the UK. (Ed McCracken)

We wonder if the producers are aware that, as matter of fact, there is a Bollywood precedent of an adaptation of Wuthering Heights: Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966) (check this old post for more information).

Categories: Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights