Kitsch splendour

Michael Billington reviews Tamasha's Wuthering Heights in The Guardian. A bittersweet review: So here we go again. Picture: A scene from Wuthering Heights by Tamasha at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. Photograph: Tristram Kenton. (Source)

Emily Brontë's novel has, at one recent count, prompted 23 plays, 14 musical versions, 16 TV and radio adaptations and eight films. What makes this one different is that it is a joint Tamasha and Oldham Coliseum production that treats the story as a Bollywood musical set in 1870s Rajasthan. But, while it has a kitsch splendour, it never gets to the dark heart of Brontë's masterpiece.
Conceived by Deepak Verma, it turns the original Catherine and Heathcliff into Shakuntala and Krishan. She is the mutinous daughter of a Rajasthan spice merchant: he is a Bombay street urchin reared as a member of her family. They fall rapturously in love beside lakeside ruins. But when she marries a neighbouring landowner called Vijay, he goes off in a tearing temper. Returning three years later as a rich man, Krishan vengefully marries Vijay's sister. Nothing, however, can quell the lovers' fateful passion and, after Shakuntala's death, they are reunited for eternity.
In Verma's version the story is told by a grizzled beggar to an attentive boy who at one point says "you can't fob me off with half the tale". But that, of course, is precisely what this adaptation does. It omits the fearful symmetry of the second half of Brontë's novel in which Heathcliff pursues his revenge into the next generation. Even more crucially, it becomes a romantic love story rather than a clash between what Lord David Cecil once called "living spiritual principles." Brontë's book is about the elemental opposition of harsh, ruthless storm and gentle, merciful calm. But here we are closer to the world of Mills and Boon than King Lear.
Although part of the dialogue is in Hindi, I would have liked more explicit social detail. Brontë's novel is rooted in the Yorkshire soil and is partly about the historical opposition of two houses. Here there is nothing to match the fierce actuality of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. What one has instead is Bollywood-style music by Felix Cross and Sheema Mukherjee with the actors lip-synching to a pre-recorded score. It is all very pleasant.
Kristine Landon-Smith's production makes an agreeable spectacle, Sue Mayes's design beautifully evokes Rajasthan skies and the acting is perfectly good. Youkti Patel and Pushpinder Chani as the doomed lovers are suitably impetuous. Garry Pillais' Vijay is full of wounded dignity and Sheena Patel makes a striking impact as his sister.
I have no quarrel with the way it is done and it good to see that the story, as when Krishan returns after his three-year absence, still has the capacity to surprise. But there is more to Brontë than we get here: not just the complex use of flashbacks but the idea of a pattern of revenge working itself through to the point of exhaustion.

Several other Asian newspapers also carry stories about this production: Daily Times (Pakistan), Times of India, The Jakarta Globe... and a video with further information can be seen here.

CHARTattack reviews Two Suns, the latest release from Bat For Lashes. As previously, references to Emily Brontë arise:

Khan's haunting voice has drawn comparisons to Kate Bush, and they're not unfounded — at times, she sounds frighteningly like Bush. It's perhaps fitting Two Suns is a study in duality, since Bush's "Wuthering Heights" is about Emily Bronte's book of the same name, which examined how two people couldn't be with or without each other. (Kate Harper)

An unexpected Brontë reference appears in this gossipy chronicle published in The Mirror about Mel Gibson's new girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. Talking about her previous boyfriend Timothy Dalton:

One of the neighbours in the run-down block where Oksana's family still own a flat said: "I know she and her mum watched Timothy Dalton on the telly in Jane Eyre.
But I've no idea if she saw Mel Gibson and craved him as well. Most people here had no idea who he was." (Matt Bell; Will Stewart)

More bizarre references. The Telegraph reviews Allegra Houston's (sister of Anjelica Houston) memoir Love Child: a Memoir of Family Lost and Found

But her straightness is what makes her such a sympathetic narrator – her book is almost Jane Eyre goes to Hollywood. And her outsider status makes her a good observer. (Lynn Barber)

On the blogosphere: Wuthering Heights is the subject on The other side of the river, Sunflower Ranch and Xatmos. Jane Eyre is discussed on Georgiana Circle: Women Healing History, Popular Penguins Reviewed and Tammy's Book Nook.

Categories: Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights,