It takes some guts to bring a new version of Wuthering Heights to Yorkshire

Tamasha's Wuthering Heights comes to Harrogate. And the Yorkshire Post has a reminder:

Emily Brontë's eternal love story Wuthering Heights has inspired about 30 adaptations. Each new version clamours to set itself apart from the rest.
Deepak Verma has found the perfect way to make his telling of the tragic love story stand out from the crowd. He has moved the story wholesale from the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors to the sun-scorched desert of Rajasthan.
Heathcliff becomes Krishan and song-and-dance numbers a la classic Bollywood movies become part of the script.
"People who love the novel understand that it's a universal story. To me it's about a kid with nothing brought up in a house where he sees the good life and where he meets the love of his life," says Verma.
"Reading the story, I found a real parallel, because of the social structures and all the other frameworks of the story, with today's India.
"It might seem strange to some people to relate Victorian England with modern India, but the issues of class and society and all those big things are there in the story and in today's India. I wanted to embrace that with this piece."
The project has been a labour of love for Verma, who has spent almost five years seeing his original idea go from concept to stage.(...)
But it takes some guts to bring a new version of Wuthering Heights to Yorkshire.
"I'm really excited about it coming to Yorkshire. It's the last venue on the nationwide tour and we're going to be really celebrating when it comes to an end next week," says Verma.
Not even a little nervous?
"It's been really well received and we're talking to people about it going into the West End. I think that helps, the fact that it has been so well received."
He doesn't seem to quite grasp the gravity of the situation. He has not just moved one of Yorkshire's greatest novels to Rajasthan, but has also, judging by early reports, fair butchered the story.
Verma's version features Catherine and Heathcliff and their love story, but does not follow the latter half of the novel and the story of their children.
"I took a long look at it and had to decide what story from all of this I wanted to tell in the two hours that I had on stage," says Verma.
"And it was clear to me that the story I really wanted to tell was the eternal love story between Cathy and Heathcliff."
Verma finally reveals the other reason he is confident that Yorkshire audiences won't simply be up in arms and see it as sacrilegious.
Brontë's book, clearly, is the major source of inspiration for the new play.
But Verma has also returned to the classic age of Bollywood of the Fifties and Sixties for his inspiration.
"The stories from Bollywood of that era are about big emotions and big stories. It seemed a perfect fit for this story and particularly the way I wanted to tell it. I wanted to take the aesthetic of those classic movies and bring that to the stage as a part of this story. It just made sense to me," says Verma.
The musical has already secured a loyal – and culturally diverse – following at its London performances. Verma says that Indian audiences are fiercely loyal to shows that they enjoy, but the universal nature of the story has brought in people from all cultures.
The show has been developed and produced by Tamasha, one of the leading Asian theatre companies in the country.
Run by Kristine Landon-Smith and Sudha Bhuchar, who played Sanjay's love interest Meena in Eastenders, the company was set up almost 20 years ago. Its name is taken from the Punjabi word meaning commotion, and it was established to address the paucity of Asian work on British stages.
Verma says that it is recognised now not as a leading Asian company, but a leading "theatre company whose work has an Asian slant to it".
"The reason I wanted to tell Wuthering Heights on stage was because I have always felt a real connection to the character of Heathcliff," says Verma.
He says he was also always attracted to the darkness of the novel.
"I love the images of the dark moors, but for me, the key to Wuthering Heights is the love story that is at its centre. That's why it works perfectly as a Bollywood musical."
Wuthering Heights is at Harrogate Theatre, June 16 to 20. (Nick Ahad)

The Independent quotes Wuthering Heights in an article about fusion across the arts:

The worry now is that the concept could soon buckle with the strain of carrying so many disparate meanings – some contradictory – and market pressures. "Fusion" for example, describes Chadha's populist pastiche Bride and Prejudice as well as the new, colourful production of Wuthering Heights by theatre company Tamasha, which transports the story to Rajasthan using both Bollywood and British musical theatre styles, a combo previously served up in Bombay Dreams. Audiences do love such productions of borrowing and cheek. (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown)

The Telegraph interviews Tom Hardy and several mentions to Wuthering Heights 2009 slip in (with the eternal will be on ITV1 later this year):

Hardy’s also played Charles Bronson, the notoriously violent prisoner, and Bill Sikes. And he’s going to be Heathcliff in ITV1’s upcoming version of Wuthering Heights. In episode one of that he bashes his head against a wall with such force that you can hear a crunch. (...)
In a preview of the ITV1 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, it’s hard to tell whether Hardy’s Heathcliff is going to hit or kiss his Cathy (who will be played by his The Take co-star Charlotte Riley) – which is just how you want him. And there’s a tenderness to his performance that he hasn’t had the chance to show before now. (Serena Davies)

We were afraid that someone would link together the results of the Ryan Commission in Ireland and Jane Eyre and it has happened. In The Independent or the Irish Times:

"Some of us read the Bronte's accounts of what their powers-that-be did to orphans. We were horrified. It gave us bad dreams. But it was fiction. That was the great thing. It was fiction. It hadn't happened. Not really. And certainly not in Ireland. Now, we know different. Now, we know, courtesy of the Ryan Commission, that, within living memory and within our own country, we visited comparable horrors on our children. Let us not hide behind euphemisms. This was not just 'failure to protect'. This was torture, pure and simple." (Lise Hand)

The Books on Film Examiner talks about Robert Pattinson and suggests a period piece for the actor:

Would you pick a "period" piece such as his part as the older Rawdy Crawley in Vanity Fair based on the classic novel by William Thackeray (that subsequently got cut but put back in for the DVD)? A Jane Austen or Bronte novel, perhaps? How about another biopic, something like his role as Salvador Dali in Little Ashes? (Connie Ann Kirk)

And the St Petersburg Times reviews Jack Murnighan's Beowulf on the Beach:

Then he offers, for each book, the Buzz, which he defines as "your cocktail party Ph.D." — what most people know about the book whether they've read it or not. (A Farewell to Arms is a great war novel, Jane Eyre's title character is a fine role model for girls.)(Colette Bancroft)

Hungtington News selects Jayne Eyre (sic) and Wuthering Heights as favorite romantic movies. The Banned Books Group recommends both novels as Urgent Reads: The 20 Books You Must Read This Year!, in the Rockland Republican Journal. The Worksop Guardian talks about an awarded local teacher with a Brontë project:

Since winning the award, the Valley teacher has brought in a new lesson plan for Wuthering Heights that includes group discussions and presentation that prompted quiet murmurings of applause from her pupils. (Tom Glover)

The Times (South-Africa) concludes this article about reading love stories with a mention to Wuthering Heights:

I’m a collection called My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, a book of classic love stories edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides, offered as “a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery.” I like the idea that reading saves marriages; it should be used in literacy campaigns. The book includes stories by Anton Chekhov - The Lady with the Little Dog, which recently starred in the film of The Reader– Alice Munro Denis Johnson, Vladimir Nabokov, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford. With such a variety of well-written takes on everything love related you might as well just marry this book. I’m sure that by the time I finish it, the sun will shine and I can finally fall asleep without artificial assistance. Until then, if you’re reading this, I still like to imagine you as Heathcliff to my Cathy, throwing yourself on my grave when you realize your mistake and I’m using the book to disguise myself as I sit, watching your building, waiting to see what you’re reading now. (Tymon Smith)

On the blogosphere, Love Romance Passion interviews the author Sandy Lender, an absolute Jane Eyre fan (as we posted before):

10. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

Sandy Lender: This might seem a wee bit odd, but in addition to my Choices Meant for Gods, I would encourage folks also to read Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. This novel is one of the best ever written. It’s my favorite of all time. There are elements in Jane Eyre that influence my writing on a conscious and subconscious level, and folks who have already read the book will probably pick out a few of those elements in Choices Meant for Gods.

When You're Happy, I'm Happy =D and Giraffe Days post about Wuthering Heights, Hey, Little Sister talks about samplers, embroidery and the Brontës, ihartyou23 finds echoes of Emily Brontë's novel in the Filipino soap opera Tayond Dalawa.

Finally, Brontës.nl publishes an account (in Dutch) of the recent, and succesful, performance of Veronica Metz, from Anois, in Haworth.

Categories: Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights