Tamasha's Wuthering Heights: more reviews

Now that the production has arrived in London, the reviews of Tamasha's Wuthering Heights (picture source) keep coming in. The Financial Times finds it 'generally successful':

Out in the wily, windy desert of Rajasthan, they’d roll and fall in sand... Not exactly the orthodox version, either of Emily Brontë’s novel or Kate Bush’s song, but the Tamasha company’s “Bollywood” adaptation at the Lyric Hammersmith is close enough to be familiar and is generally successful.
The action has been relocated from the bleak Yorkshire moors to the inhospitable territory of what is now north-western India, at more or less the same early 19th-century period. Kristine Landon-Smith’s cast faithfully lip-sync to English-language “playback” numbers written for the production and recorded in Bangalore. Lyricist Felix Cross and co-composer Sheema Mukherjee achieve optimum crossover appeal, especially with the two big numbers between the central couple, “What The Rajkumari Wants” and “The Sun Will Rise”.
Deepak Verma changes little of Brontë’s story, apart from the names and, like the 1939 film version, the plot more or less ending with Cathy’s death. Here Cathy is Shakuntala, who grows up sharing a more than sisterly bond with Krishan (alias Heathcliff), a beggar boy raised by her father as his own son. There is a jealous biological brother who abuses Krishan/Heathcliff after the father’s death; Shakuntala/Cathy marries a rich man, Krishan disappears for years and returns with a mysterious fortune, intent on revenge and regaining Shakuntala; he is haunted by her for years afterwards. Pushpinder Chani smoulders effectively as Krishan and Youkti Patel is passionate yet irresolute as Shakuntala. In another astute touch, Verma turns the maid, Nelly Dean, into Shakuntala’s ayah (played by Rina Fatania).
The novel’s several framing devices here become the single framework of an old man retelling the story to an urchin in order to have his cherished urn returned to him: the ageing Krishan, carrying Shakuntala’s ashes. This framework also makes for some points about class and wealth as young Changoo walks through scenes and numbers unremarked by the characters, ostensibly because they are merely figures in old Baba’s story but also because he is beneath their notice in terms of caste. I am astounded to find that Tamasha is already 20 years old; cultural hybrids have become much more common on British stages in that time but they remain at the forefront, demonstrating that “multicultural” is more than a mere buzzword. (Ian Shuttleworth)

The Times gives it 2 out of 5 stars:

If you were ever reckless enough to stage Jane Eyre in the style of Busby Berkeley, you would presumably make a point of ensuring that song and, above all, dance played a dominant role. Similarly, if you are going to give Heathcliff and Cathy the Bollywood treatment, it makes sense to turn up the volume and give the choreographer full rein.
Which is, oddly enough, precisely what does not happen in this production from Tamasha, the pioneering company that gave us East is East, that magnificent celebration of the new Britain. As conceived by Deepak Verma — familiar to TV audiences as Sanjay in EastEnders — Emily Brontë’s novel becomes a doggedly one-dimensional pot-boiler set in the deserts of Rajasthan.
Felix Cross and Sheema Mukherjee’s lip-synched music — specially recorded in India, although you would hardly guess it — is never more than tepid. And Kristine Landon-Smith’s direction delivers little of the visual energy that is the hallmark of the Bollywood industry. Brontë’s taste for the Gothic and Mumbai’s love of melodrama ought to have made a promising match. However, this half-hearted pairing yields neither spectacle nor psychological insight. (Then again, some of us felt much the same way about the madly overrated Slumdog Millionaire.) Heathcliff becomes the lowly gypsy outsider Krishan, who is adopted by a well-to-do merchant and inevitably falls for the beautiful daughter Shakuntala (Cathy in the original). When the girl marries the insipid landowner, Vijay, Krishan disappears, only to return three years later, a wealthy man of the world. His passion for Shakuntala remains unfulfilled nevertheless.
Any adaptation is doomed to jettison much of the detail of the original. In this case, what little remains functions on the level of high-minded pantomime in a tale narrated by a mysterious beggar. The latter part of Brontë’s novel has been omitted, Verma preferring to end at the death of Shakuntala. The decision to pepper the dialogue with Hindi phrases is irritating too. My Indian wife has taught me quite a few over the years, but I was still left in the dark as my neighbours chuckled away.
Youkti Patel and Pushpinder Chani make the best of the paper-thin central roles, and Sue Mayes’s set designs provide some fetching vistas. The characters, though, seem dwarfed by the stage: only in the party scenes in the mercifully brief second half do music and movement briefly come together. (Clive Davis)

The Telegraph gives it 3 stars:

I only wish I could recommend Tamasha theatre company’s Wuthering Heights, which transposes Emily Brontë’s novel into a Bollywood musical setting, with ardency.
I notice that former EastEnders star Deepak Verma, who initiated the project and wrote the book, runs a film company. This might explain why the show has such a half-way house feel about it. You can see how it might look good on the big screen; on stage, it feels dramatically malnourished.
There’s insufficient dirt and extremity in the 18th-century Rajasthan we’re shown here to match the desolation and wildness of Brontë’s Yorkshire moors. Pushpinder Chani’s sullen street urchin Krishan and Youkti Patel’s Shakuntala, headstrong daughter of a spice merchant, come across as sanitised versions of Heathcliff and Cathy. True to Bollywood form, the cast lip-sync to the songs, which sums up a show that never cries out from the heart. (Dominic Cavendish)

The Naples Daily News reports the commencement speech given by the outgoing Student Government President Sean Terwilliger as student speaker yesterday at the Florida Gulf Coast University. This is a fragment of what he said:

“Often the maturing process is spoken about as if it is an automatic, but everyone knows that a true higher education is much more than knowing the Pythagorean theory or reading Charlotte Bronte,” Terwilliger said. “I don’t believe it’s automatic or an instinctual habit that allows us to mature. I believe we can only mature through experience. We must live our lives with integrity, honesty, and care for others while allowing others to care for us.” (John Osborne)

And this is what we have found on the blogosphere: Jane Eyre is discussed by Bookstove, Liberfilia (in Spanish) and Scriptural (in French). Word Craft has written a poem about Jane Eyre, the character, too. Echostains Blog tries to guess how Charlotte Brontë really did look judging from her various portraits. On Flickr, kristienkahn has uploaded a few pictures of Fritz Eichenberg's Wuthering Heights illustrations.

EDIT: And last but not least, dovegreyreader is experiencing an acute case of Brontëmania, Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow seems to be the source.

Categories: Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights