Reaching for Tissues

More reviews of the Edinburgh performances of the Northern Ballet Theatre production of Wuthering Heights. Now, the Scotsman:

FROM Emily Brontë's original novel to Kate Bush's chart-topping single, and all the film versions in between, if there's one thing Wuthering Heights stands for, it's passion. So in many ways, dance is the perfect genre for this tragic love story, because you can fit a whole lot of longing into two hours of body language.
In the hands of a more technically-focused company, this ballet could easily fall flat. But Northern Ballet Theatre has always given equal weighting to acting and dancing, perhaps more here than ever before. Which isn't to say the technique's not there – it is, as evidenced in leap after high leap and some intricate pas de deux.
Layered on top of this, however, are some fine performances, turning Heathcliff and co into living, breathing three-dimensional characters. Occasionally, the line between believability and melodrama looks perilously close to being crossed, but invariably they pull back just in time.
Throughout, choreographer David Nixon perfectly captures the class division that separates Heathcliff and Edgar, with Cathy torn between her shabby but passionate life at Wuthering Heights and the opulence of Thrushcross Grange.
Aided by Claude-Michel Schönberg's rousing score, the moments of extreme love and frustrated hate between Cathy and Heathcliff are everything you could hope for. While the beautifully staged ending – with a lonely Heathcliff surrounded by the memory of the lovers' younger selves – may well leave you reaching for the tissues. (Kelly Apter)

The Wharfedale & Airedale Observer suggests ideas for promoting the tourism in the area:

While Yorkshire attractions such as Ilkley Moor, the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway and Haworth’s world famous Bronte Parsonage Museum are known far and wide, West Yorkshire Tourism Partnership and Wel-come to Yorkshire are keen to give visitors a true sense of the places to visit, to give a boost to local tourism. (...)
Locals in Haworth have already shared a few insights, highlighting their diverse community – home to lecturers, architects, artists and musicians – and pointing tourists in the direction of walks loved by residents but little known outside the area.

The Columbus Dispatch interviews the writer Carol Goodman, author of Arcadia Falls:

Q: How did you develop this fascination with the dark side, magic, madness, curses and the like?
A: Through reading. Jane Eyre is my favorite novel, and the atmosphere in that story - what happened in that attic? - is haunting. You are so imbued with a sense of something else, something that threatens the subconscious. It's terrific. (Holly Zachariah)

Gordon Brown is again on the literary news. Now because he quoted Keats in a speech. We read in The Independent:

Now Brown, the Romantic, turns to Keats
Our PM as the poet's 'stubborn rock' in a stormy sea? Well, it's a change from Heathcliff, or mad Mrs Rochester
Gordon Brown has inspired many literary comparisons: from the troubled and brooding Heathcliff to mad- woman-in-the-attic Mrs Rochester. An aide to Tony Blair once even described Mr Brown's life as a "Shakespearean tragedy". (Jane Merrick)

The Burlington Free Press talks about the recent classics-meet-monsters publications:

In Sherri Browning Erwin's "Jane Slayre" (Gallery Books), hitting stores April 13, Charlotte Bronte's plain Jane Eyre is an indomitable zombie killer.

In the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine they cannot imagine Heathcliff or Catherine in a Singles Night, [tell me a story and make it a good one] reviews Jane Eyre, Women's Walking Shoes recommends a visit to Brontë country and Ephemera posts several pictures related with the life and work of the Brontë sisters. Finally Syrie James, author of The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë, has uploaded to YouTube an interview at WEDU TV where she discusses her book and her previous one, The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen.

Categories: Dance, Fiction, Haworth, Jane Eyre, References, Sequels, Wuthering Heights