Doom-eager Brontës?

Yet another review of Cathy Marston's Wuthering Heights ballet. From the Financial Times:

There are certain fearful evenings with dance theatre when you know that time has died, that the last darkness has claimed the world. So with the Bern Ballet, which decided last Wednesday to make a UK debut with Cathy Marston’s Wuthering Heights, a show interminable despite its advertised 70-minutes-and-no- interval listing.
It is described by its choreographer as “a personal response” to the narrative: we are told that she has “chosen to reflect only on the first half of the novel and also to reduce the characters to five”, and has “multiplied” Heathcliffe and Catherine to “amplify their inner thoughts and emotions”. Given these brazen get-out clauses, I report that the ensuing gymnastics could as well have been “inspired” by The Critique of Pure Reason or Grace Louise Richmond’s Round the Corner in Gay Street. The stage is occupied by two grey wedge-shapes and a small, off-kilter box, under which dancers seek what should be refuge from their frightful tasks. Above, an assemblage of telegraph wires that descend, as the evening drags its cheerless feet, to no apparent purpose. Lighting is, as we say, “atmospheric”.
The dancers are, for much of the time, dressed for a pyjama party in a reformatory. Beside the stage are a cellist and a conductor involved in an electronic score (by Dave Maric) which might be considered narrative noise. Movement of a clutch-and-hold-and-twist anxiety ranges between t’ai chi portentousness and touch-me-not aggressions.
The manner seems repetitive, inexpressive. The duplications of characters, the dreary costuming and incidents involving four very basic chairs which feature importantly as the evening progresses (a word I use as one might speak of a recalcitrant glacier) remain for this observer inexplicable. The cast do what they do with all the suavity of undertakers’ mutes. Jenny Tattersall is a much put-upon, bossy Catherine, and the angst is as high as an elephant’s eye. Martha Graham once called the Brontës “doom-eager”. This proves her point. (Clement Crisp)

But does it really?

Anyway, we have quite a few new Brontëites today, both famous and anonymous, and we don't think they consider the Brontës 'doom-eager'.

The Daily Mail chats about books with Fi Glover, chair of judges for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009.

What book first gave you the reading bug?
[...] We had a pretty conservative syllabus of reading at school; I remember liking Jane Austen and loving the Brontes.

The Canadian Press has an article on a new National Geographic book for which 75 celebrities were asked about their favourite places, My Favourite Place on Earth. We have a Brontëite among them who chooses the place we would also choose, Alex Trebek:

For Alex Trebek, it's the town of Haworth, England. [...] Trebek, a fan of Emily Bronte's novel "Wuthering Heights," describes visiting Haworth, in West Yorkshire, and staying in a B&B across the street from the Bronte parsonage. The Sudbury, Ont.-born TV personality says the Brontes' house looks much the same as it did two centuries ago.

And Shanghaiist talks about a place that we are sure is on someone's list.

This last weekend, new Shanghaiist intern Kirsti Jönson trekked with a group of friends to the idyllic forests of Moganshan, a mountain located in Zhejiang Province, about 200km from Shanghai. [...]
We were especially excited to come across The Lodge. Besides being a guest house, it was also a super cozy café with a charming staff where you could get great zips of morning coffee or an evening drink. They even had a small library inside, stocked with everything from Emily Brontë to Hunter S. Thompson. Since our Chinese is still subpar, they helped us find the places we wanted to go.

The National (Abu Dhabi) looks into a regular family's reading choices:

The last book Meurling-Perera read was a classic from her girlhood: Jane Eyre. “Now I really understand that book,” she says. [...]
Lyanne, [...] preparing for university in Australia next year to study journalism, is at a different stage in life. “Right now I’m focused on exams and reading for school,” she says. She has enjoyed this year’s reading list, though: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Arthur Miller’s play A View From the Bridge, poems by Wordsworth and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. (Denise Roig)

The Portsmouth News publishes the following reminder:

SOUTHAMPTON, Main House, Nuffield Theatre, University Road. 7.30pm; 3pm Sat mat. Wuthering Heights. Created by Tamasha, based on the novel by Emily Brontë. Admission £10-£18, concs. (023) 8067 1771, box office, nuffieldtheatre.co.uk.

Don't miss it if you're in the area!

On the blogosphere: the Brontë Parsonage Blog posts about last evening's Writing the Century and Page Turner writes about Wuthering Heights.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Books, Brontëites, Dance, Haworth, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights