The ex-mafioso Brontëite

The Asian News reminds us that Tamasha's Bollywood-style adaptation of Wuthering Heights is set to open at the end of this month:

One of the world's greatest love stories, Wuthering Heights, gets a Bollywood makeover when it comes to Oldham Coliseum this month.
Produced by Tamasha - the award winning British Asian theatre company behind hit shows including East is East and The Trouble with Asian Men - Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights features all the ingredients of classic Indian cinema - romance, melodrama and a captivating soundtrack bringing together some of the best of British Asian talent.
Adapted by Deepak Verma (better known for his role as Sanjay in Eastenders), this classic story of passion, jealousy and revenge makes a seamless transition from the Yorkshire Moors to the deserts of Rajasthan in a production that the whole family is expected to enjoy.
Wuthering Heights opens at the Coliseum on 13 March and runs until 28 March. For tickets, contact the box office on 0161 624 2829 or visit www.coliseum.org.uk.

Until then you can of course follow the rehearsals through their blog.

Sleaford is also witness to some Brontë-related rehearsals as the Sleaford Little Theatre will be putting on Jane Eyre at the Playhouse in Westgate in April, as reported by the Sleaford Target.

The next production to be staged by Sleaford Little Theatre at the Playhouse in Westgate will be Jane Eyre.
The group is currently rehearsing for the production, to be presented in April, but cast members Tony Gordon and Karen Davey took some time out from rehearsals at St Denys' Church to pose in character for the Target – as Edward Rochester and Jane Eyre.
Jane Eyre, directed by Sue Robey, will be staged at the Playhouse from Wednesday, April 1, to Saturday, April 4.
Performances begin at 7.30pm. To book tickets ring the box office at Sleaford Tourist Information Centre on (01529) 414294 or call in at the centre. (Picture source. Picture by John Forman)

We are not quite leaving the stage just yet, as the Guardian Theatre Blog, inspired by Austentatious, a new Jane Austen musical, pauses to think of other musical adaptations of classic books.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
With passion, death and the potential for a dramatic Gothic backdrop, Brontë's masterpiece offers much for the musical adapter. In the UK, there have been two shows based on the novel, neither of which has met with great success, possibly due to the personnel rather than the content. Cliff Richard's 1996 vehicle Heathcliff was much mocked for its fast and loose treatment of the story and, of course, because the Peter Pan of pop would hardly be anyone's first choice to play the brooding, murderous, gypsy-like boy. Bernard J Taylor's offering was much closer to the book, but began its life with a concept album with some surreal casting: Lesley Garrett as Cathy, Dave Willetts as Heathcliff, and Bonnie Langford as Isabella. (Carrie Dunn)

There are another two important musical adaptations in the making: Frédéric Chaslin's opera and Mark Ryan's musical. The above-mentioned Tamasha project could also be included here, of course. So yes, we definitely agree: 'Brontë's masterpiece offers much for the musical adapter'.

Still on the field of adaptations we have been unable to help laughing out loud at the following report from Brand Republic:

ITV has already spoken about plans to cancel its Yorkshire-based shows 'Heartbeat' and 'The Royal', with only soap opera 'Emmerdale' surviving from the north of England filming schedule.
Big budget costume dramas have also got the chop, with plans for an adaptation of 'Wuthering Heights' already shelved. . . (Sarah Crawley-Boevey)

There are indeed many news outlets reporting the ITV's financial crisis, but this seems to be the only one going back in time and actually undoing Wuthering Heights 2009. This is why a little research can never hurt.

On the book front, Philippa Gregory reviews Katharine McMahon's The Rose of Sebastopol for The Washington Post.

I fear that the author simply fell in love with Rosa and saw her as wonderful heroine material. But she is too wild, too doomed for the modern reader to endure for long: She laughs through her tears, she runs away, she impulsively visits the poor and leaps dangerously from her swing. She is a genre heroine, a Cathy from "Wuthering Heights" without the depth, a Scarlett O'Hara without the grit, all sensibility and no sense.

And according to Travel Daily News, 'British Tourism Week organisers suggest ‘lit-trips’ the new trend for 2009'.

Last year, British destinations won the first three places in TripAdvisor’s top ten of the world’s literary hotspots. London, Stratford-upon-Avon and Edinburgh gained accolades for their connections to the greatest authors and poets ever. Dickens, Chaucer, Milton, Keats, Shakespeare, Conan Doyle, Stevenson were all mentioned in the report. Britain is also the home of Tolkien, Fleming, Bronte, Austen, Wordsworth, Dylan Thomas, Agatha Christie, George and T S Elliot, Lewis Carroll, John Bunyan, Shelley, Stoker and many more, plus contemporary authors such as J K Rowling and Clive Barker. (Theodore Koumelis)

Ah, we are definitely converts to the delights of literary tourism.

We also knew how redeeming reading can be; a couple of news emphasise it today. The Telegraph reports how Louis Ferrante, a former Mafioso recently received at 10 Downing Street by Sarah Brown, seems to be a Brontëite:

Ferrante’s favourite books sometimes echoed his own experiences. He highlighted parts of Tolstoy’s A Confession, which “rang true in my own life and personal awakening”. Dostoevsky “was in prison and at the foot of the gallows … Crime and Punishment was a testament to natural justice”. He was riveted by Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. He loved to read about the Second World War and Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean was a favourite character – “a convict who makes good on a bad life”. But some of his enthusiasm was for style rather than subject: he learnt a lot, he says, “about slow, methodic plot development” from Thomas Hardy. He was fond of Jane Austen and of Charlotte Brontë. (Nicolette Jones)

And The Daily Northwestern goes in the same direction:

Heck, if I was in lockdown for 23 hours a day, I would probably jump into a Bronte novel to keep myself from going completely insane. (Brian Regan)

The blog Famous People in the Census posts a picture of the Brontë family names as recorded in the 1841 census. Bookshelves of Doom would rather not think about Ellen Page playing Jane Eyre. Daily Dickinson posts Emily Dickinson's poem on Charlotte Brontë's (imagined) grave. Poemas del alma posts a summary of Wuthering Heights (in Spanish). Steph's Shots has uploaded a set of Top Withens pictures and knoopie some pictures of the backstage of the Seattle performances of Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre, both on flickr. And finally, The Bantam Classics Literary Quotation of the Week is from Wuthering Heights.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Poetry, Theatre, Victorian Era, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights