A respectable climb

Let's start with The Stage's lukewarm review of Tamasha's Wuthering Heights now on stage in London:
Picture: Alastair Muir. Lovers: Shakuntala/Cathy (Youkti Patel) and Krishan/Heathcliff (Pushpinder Chani) (Source)

Tamasha’s adaptaion translates Emily Bronte’s novel to the high-passion India of Bollywood movies, with no special gain or loss beyond the admirable purpose of speaking more directly to Asian audiences and giving employment to Asian actors. Bronte’s basic story moves quite smoothly to the new setting, with Indian concepts of caste and propriety nicely underlining the story of a poor boy whose love for a woman socially above him is blocked, inspiring him to become rich and exact a revenge that damns him.
A scene from Wuthering Heights at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith
The need to fit a sprawling novel into stage time means that some key sections of the story are reduced to a single sentence by an onstage narrator, but the emotional content of what remains is enhanced through the insertion of highly passionate songs by Felix Cross and Sheema Mukherjee, pre-recorded in the Bollywood manner for the actors to lip-sync to.
Pushpinder Chani plays the Heathcliff figure with appropriate surliness and macho sensuality, though with less of a sense of obsessive love than one might wish, while Youkti Patel has touches of darkness and nastiness that could surprise those who have a sentimental image of Bronte’s Cathy. Rina Fatania provides strong emotional continuity and some nicely earthy comedy as a motherly servant. (Gerald Berkowitz)

The Evening Standard also publishes a similar review:

(...)Although the stage drips with opulent hues and lavish silk saris, and Sue Mayes’s clever multi-levelled design gives a pleasing sense of endless desert vistas, too much of the first half is unforgivably lifeless. Director Kristine Landon-Smith sanctions a lot of faffing about in the attempt to establish local colour and we realise with mounting disappointment that there is to be almost no dancing. What’s Bollywood without a good ensemble number? Where’s the wet sari scene?
In keeping with Indian tradition, the actors lip-synch their way through previously recorded music. Felix Cross and Sheema Mukherjee have written some catchy numbers, although the majority could do with another couple of bursts of chorus to make them stick fast in our brains.
Belatedly, passion, tempers and stage energy flare up. Youkti Patel rightly makes Shakuntala a headstrong young madam whose head is turned by wealth. There’s not much sense of brooding cruelty about Pushpinder Chani’s Heathcliff, sorry Krishan, in the lengthy first act, which makes the 45 minutes of exceedingly bad behaviour in act two something of a gear change. If Verma had carried his account over into a second generation like Brontë did, it’s unlikely Krishan would have been so merciless to the youngsters.
Not, then, the absolute heights of Wuthering-ness but a respectable climb to a decent look-out point. (Fiona Mountford)

John Carey reviews for The Sunday Times Lilian Pizzichini's awaited biography of Jean Rhys, The Blue Hour:

Few writers have made such a mess of their life as Jean Rhys. We should be grateful she did, otherwise we should not have her ­novels. They are all versions of her autobiography — not excluding her masterpiece, Wide ­Sargasso Sea, though it is disguised as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre — and they all draw their power from the pain and rage she felt at the way people, especially men, had treated her. The thought of it never ceased to torment her, and it brought her close to madness. But she could not write about anything else. She is a classic case of the cruel price art exacts from life. (Read more)

Lynn Freed's latest novel The Servants' Quarters is reviewed in the San Francisco Gate:

In books much more than in movies, what is hideous can also be deeply appealing. Charles Dickens and the Brontës captured this sensibility of the erotic grotesque, creating deeply wounded or dirty characters that nonetheless hold a heartrending fascination for the protagonist and reader. Lynn Freed's "The Servants' Quarters" is an updated addition to this genre. Freed blends Dickensian musings on class with a Brontë-like love story, set against the backdrop of South Africa after the Holocaust. (Margot Kaminski)

and the New York Times:

It seems to me that two 19th-century novels lurk behind “The Servants’ Quarters,” symbolizing the stylistic shift that takes place after Part 1. The first, explicitly mentioned in the text, is “Great Expectations” (that mother lode of literary reference). Cressida can easily be seen as a distaff Pip visiting George Harding’s ghoulish Miss Havisham. A lot of the marvelous brio of the early chapters reflects sheer delight in the oddness of this setting and its eccentric characters. With Part 2, the tone moves closer to “Jane Eyre,” with Harding a crippled Mr. Rochester and Cressida/Jane moving from revulsion and anger to love and concern. (William Boyd)

And another review. The Providence Journal of A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick:

Writing in the tradition of such gothic romances as Rebecca or Jane Eyre, Goolrick updates the genre by telling his story from the male point of view. Relentless sexual desire makes the hero, Ralph Truitt, a victim of predatory women who lust for the material world. He is a man ripe for martyrdom. (Mandy Twaddell)

The May issue of Bright Lights Film Journal devotes an article to Ida Lupino. Remembering her role as Emily Brontë in Devotion (1946) the article qualifies the film as "trashy". Le Nouvel Observateur is more generous with Les Soeurs Brontë (1979):

Les sœurs, mais plus encore le frère, sont bien là, même si le film a été amputé d'autorité. Ce Téchiné-là ne manque ni d'intelligence ni de souffle ni de grandeur. (Pascal Mérigeau) (Google translation)

The Guardian publishes an article about Eamonn McCabe's Writers' Rooms exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Now McCabe's photographs are being given the exhibition treatment: from today they are on display at – where else? – the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire, spread across the rooms where the sisters penned their classics.
Jenna Holmes, arts officer at the Parsonage, knows exactly what addiction she is helping to feed. "One of the most exciting aspects of a visit to the Brontë Parsonage Museum is to see the very room in which the Brontës wrote their famous novels," she says, in the manner of a shady character leaning out of a darkened alleyway, promising one free hit of Martin Amis's sock drawer or Salman Rushdie's rotating pull-out larder. "With this new exhibition we can also offer a fascinating glimpse into the writing rooms of some of the most important contemporary writers working today." (David Barnett)

To the list of funny plays on words with Brontë novels inspired by Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies we add this one in The Post-Chronicle: Jane Eyre Hockey.

Readers talking about 'great literature' in The Spokesman-Review, Victorian B&Bs in Mendocino (California) in the San Francisco Gate, journalists with Brontë-esque names in the Joplin Globe, more Brontë references in the Twilight saga in La Nazione (in Italian) and Telérama (in French)

La Gaceta (Spain) mentions the George Bataille's essay on Wuthering Heights:

En La literatura y el Mal, Georges Bataille aborda el tema del mal en ocho ensayos. Cada uno de ellos está dedicado a la obra de algún autor en especial. En el primero trata Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë. En él, Bataille muestra nítidamente el estrecho vínculo entre amor y muerte y sostiene que la verdad más íntima del amor puro es la muerte, hecho magníficamente expresado en la obra de Brönte a través de la unión entre Heathcliff y Catherine Earnshaw. ¿Es verdaderamente la muerte la verdad del amor? Y si no es así, ¿por qué preferimos este tipo de historias? (L. Ferrero / A. Pérez) (Google translation)

La Voz de Cádiz (Spain) reviews Otro Final (more information in this previous post):

¿Y si Cathy no hubiera muerto, con tanto penar de amor, al final de Cumbres Borrascosas y viviera con su adorado y maltratado Heathcliff en armonía? (Elena Sierra) (Google translation)

Tifeo Web interviews the Italian writer Filomena Cecere:

Quali sono i suoi libri del cuore?
Ci sono tre libri che mi accompagnano da una vita: Cime tempestose di Emily Bronte per la spettrale passionalità[.] (Nadia Turriziani) (Google translation)

Obiwi reviews L'enfer me ment by Bernhard Gray:

Je repense aux manuscrits des sœurs Brontë (Les Hauts de hurlevent, Jane Eyre)qui sont en fait, lorsqu'ils sont ouverts, des carnets de la taille de deux petits doigts côte à côte(!). Les trois sœurs avaient pris un pseudo masculin pour faire accepter, en leur temps, les excès de leurs écrits... (ApponoAstos) (Google translation)

BDzoom reviews Édith & Yann's Les Hauts de Hurlevent comic:

Parmi la profusion d’adaptations littéraires en bandes dessinées, il faut bien reconnaître que la collection « Ex-libris » des éditions Delcourt (dirigée par le scénariste Jean-David Morvan), laquelle est d’ailleurs un peu à l’origine de cette mode « bédéesque » du retour aux grands textes classiques, est certainement ce qui ce fait de mieux dans le genre ; ceci grâce à un concept éditorial assez pédagogique qui consiste, avant tout, à défendre des histoires que les auteurs apprécient vraiment : d’ailleurs, dans la plupart des cas, ce sont eux qui choissent les romans qu’ils mettent en cases. Rien d’étonnant, alors, que les auteurs des très Victoriens (et trop méconnus) orphelins londoniens « Basil & Victoria » aient jeté leur dévolu sur cet incontournable de la littérature anglaise écrit par Emily Brontë (qui fut publié en 1847, juste avant son décès l’année suivante), confirmant ainsi leur attrait pour la culture britannique ! Le crayon acéré d’Edith y fait merveille : croquant des personnages aux trognes savoureuses qui évoluent sur les landes balayées par les vents du nord des hauteurs de Gimmerton, au lieu-dit « Wuthering Heights » : des ambiances colorées dans des tons bleu-nuit, un peu comme dans les peintures du paysagiste anglais William Turner. Quant à la narration, très fluide, due au prolifique Yann (« Les innommables », « Les éternels », « Pin-Up », etc.), elle est significative du style romantique que ce dernier exploite sous le pseudonyme de Balac (« Sambre » ou « Le Sang des Porphyres »). Mais l’incorrigible scénariste n’a pas pu s’empêcher de rajouter un petit fond caustique et cruel : et c’est ce qui fait, justement, l’originalité de ce bel ouvrage qui nous raconte le destin tragique de cette famille prise dans les tourments violents de la passion et de la vengeance ! (Gilles Ratier) (Google translation)

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland) reviews a new Swiss edition of L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between. The initial quote by Emily Brontë (But, child of dust, the fragrant flowers, /The bright blue sky and velvet sod / Were strange conductors to the bowers / Thy daring footsteps must have trod.) is mentioned:

Schon der erste Satz des Prologs, aber auch die einem Motto entsprechende Stanze von Emily Brontë indizieren Grenzüberschreitungen, die auch einen Dialog zwischen sichtbaren und verborgenen Welten ermöglichen werden. (Hansjörg Graf) (Google translation)

On the blogosphere: zx01111010 posts about Jane Eyre and LitteraturNu has an article about Stormfulde Højder (Wuthering Heights) in Danish and Brontës.nl talks about a new Dutch edition of the novel.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Books, Comics, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights