Australian Brontës

Theatre, talks and cinema in a triple Brontë alert for today June 6 all over Australia:

1. A production of Charles Vance's Wuthering Heights by The Villanova Players opened just yesterday in Morningside, Brisbane:

Wuthering Heights
by Charles Vance
adapted from the novel by Emily Bronte
Directed by Karen O'Brien-Hall

The Cast
Heathcliff Stuart Waters
Catherine Earnshaw Michaela Widderson-Kidd
Hindley Earnshaw Leo Bradley
Hareton Earnshaw Lachlan Walker
Cathy Linton Rebecca See
Ellen Dean Mary Woodall
Edgar Linton Chris Bradley
Joseph John Grey
Isabella Linton Ngaire Lock
Lockwood Trevor Bond

"The Theatre"
Morningside Campus of the Southbank Institute of TAFE,
Clearview Terrace, Morningside

Evenings at 8:00pm
Fri 5th, Sat 6th June, Thurs 11th , Fri 12th, Sat 13th June, Thurs 18th, Fri 19th, Sat 20th June
Matinees at 2:00pm
Sun 7th Sat 13th, Sun 14th, Sat 20th June

2. A talk organized by the Australian Brontë Association:

6 Jun 10:30 AM Charlotte and Religion (Christine Alexander)
Sydney Mechanics School of Arts

3. A screening at the National Film and Sound Archive:

Luis Buñuel
Sat 6 Jun 4.30 PM Abismos de Pasión (1953)
Arc at the NFSA, Canberra

Wuthering Heights seems at first to be firmly in Mexican cinema's 'ranchera' genre, like a south-of-the-border genre rebadge of Jezebel or Gone with the Wind. That is, until its darkly, sadistically handsome hero Alejandro whispers 'Catalina'. Thus, literature's most familiar codeword for romantic yearning suddenly unlocks the film's artistic derivations and Buñuel's intent. Like Robinson Crusoe (which Buñuel had previously brought to the screen in 1952) Emily Brontë's famously death and sex-infused Gothic novel was a favourite of the surrealist's artistic circle in the 1920s, and its adaptation a long held ambition of the director. Realised within the constraints of Mexican genre cinema, the film may not have been quite the symbolist romance that Buñuel apparently intended, the director later stating his disappointment with the actors' distracting touches of Mexican cinema star power. But in some ways, it is all the richer, and perhaps more fantastic, for having this Latinised, pop novella undercurrent — all that tabloid desire, sadism and machismo swelling below its historical costume drama surfaces.

Categories: Alert, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights