Podcasts

  • With... Bethany Turner-Pemberton - Sassy and Sam chat to researcher and curator Bethany Turner-Pemberton. Bethany is PhD candidate in Textiles and Museum Studies at Manchester Metropolitan...
    1 day ago

Thursday, August 22, 2019

LondonTheatre1 reviews the musical Cathy: A Retelling of Wuthering Heights as performed at the Edinburgh Fringe:
It takes a little while to get used to it all – everyone’s dressed in white, the housekeeper Nelly (Susannah Greenow) as well as her employer Hindley (Oscar George Copper), the central character Cathy (Emma Torrens) as well as her love interests Edgar (Joseph Folley) and Heathcliff (Samuel Terry). Having suspended disbelief (I kept a straight face at not having period costumes, but struggled to do so at the sight of plastic water bottles, this show being set in the early nineteenth century), there were times when the performance started to feel like a play with songs rather than a musical, such was the extent of spoken word scenes between musical numbers.
But when these characters do sing, to borrow an advertising strapline from a popular beverage, good things come to those who wait. The harmonies are easy on the ear, and while this isn’t, for the most part, a musical with much choreography – Cathy seems to spend more time lying down than dancing – the solo numbers are a delight, even when expressing feelings and emotions of sorrow, pain and despair. Hindley’s love of alcohol is portrayed well, as is his penchant for gambling; the latter works in Heathcliff’s favour. The former is a moment of comic relief, with Copper’s Hindley parading around energetically.
Another Fringe Brontë-related production is Eleventh Hour Theatre's More Myself Than I Am. Deadline reviews it:
Unfortunately this production turned out to be more like The Professor than Jane Eyre.
The play follows the four Brontë siblings as they search for meaningful employment and personal fulfilment outside their father’s austere Northern parsonage.
Unsung brother Branwell was the family’s golden child. Professional success is quickly followed by death and eventually only Charlotte survives into her late thirties.
The actors do well with the material they are given and their attempts to make the sisters seem more independent from each other were noticeable. Anyone who is unfamiliar with the Brontë’s lives will appreciate this incredibly well-researched production.
The enthusiastic but aimless plot mirrors the siblings’ confused search for fulfilment but unfortunately this does not make for a very entertaining production. Passages of dull exposition are interspersed with occasional periods of shouting. (...)
The costumes and sets were patchy but this can be expected forgiven for any low-budget Fringe production. With the exception of a distractingly fake-looking wig the authenticity of the props and costumes to the era reflected a degree of care which shows a real affection for the play’s subjects.
The title, a line from Cathy’s passionate description of her relationship with Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, overall does not describe this ambitious but under-developed play. (Heather Simmons)
More reviews. Richmondshire Today talks about The History Wardrobe's Gothic for Girls:
Lucy [Adlington] moved the presentation (lecture seems the wrong word when it’s done in costume) further into the 19th century, with Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters added in. It’s all fascinating stuff, honestly. But I am also wondering how all this segues into Gothic fashion in any specific way. (Guy Carpenter)
The Telegraph and the most sterile of questions, which is better: Yorkshire or Lancashire?:
The cobbled streets of Haworth are a mecca for Brontë devotees while Salt's Mill, in the model Victorian mill-town of Saltaire, displays possibly the world's greatest public collection of Hockney's work – and it's free. (Helen Pickles and Cathy Toogood)
The Logical Indian and mental illness in literature:
“What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.”
In Charlotte Brontë’s novel, this is how Jane Eyre describes Mr Rochester’s wife Bertha, a woman with an unknown hereditary mental illness, who has been locked up in an attic for ten years. Back in Victorian England, locking away the ‘insane’ was not uncommon or unheard of. In fact, it was often considered a kinder way to treat someone suffering from such an illness, rather than sending them to an asylum. One of the most significant features of the novel is Bertha’s ‘madness’, and its imagery defines society’s perception of mental illness – characterised by stigma, shame and lack of concern. (Sumanti Sen & Sayantani Nath)
Culturess reviews the film Ready or Not:
Grace’s high-necked wedding dress makes you feel as if you’re watching a 1940 Gothic drama in the vein of Jane Eyre (or riding Disney’s Haunted Mansion). This timelessness hits at the core of the film’s point involving the history and old-world feelings that the wealthy maintain. (Kristen Lopez)
The Bennington Banner and rich people:
One of the major political parties has a devotion to them that ranks with the passion between Cathy and Heathcliff. Donald Trump has built his theme park persona on being the living embodiment of unbridled wealth in much the same way that Walt Disney made Mickey Mouse the symbol of his entertainment empire. I'm sure that there are other similarities that can be drawn between Donald and Mickey, but I won't do it here. (Alden Graves)
The Somerville Times reviews the poetry chapbook Dreadsummer by Eliot Cardinaux:
First, the title: Dreadsummer. Before I’d read a single poem, the title bespoke (to me) some call of the wild, a terrible loss, a subject matter emotionally wrenching, like Heathcliff and Catherine’s tragic love. And I was wrong, but I was close. (Doug Holder)
Trinidad and Tobago Newsday talks about a local exhibition:
Cultural diversity through the literary arts from the region is on display at the National Library from August 19-30. The exhibition, Award Winning Caribbean Authors, is a collaborative effort of the National Library and Information System Authority (Nalis) and the Bocas Lit Fest for Carifesta XIV. (...)
The novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which brought Dominica’s Jean Rhys international fame, is also showcased. (Veela Mungal)
Electric Lit and novels about disappearing:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë:
I can’t find a woman in literature before Jane Eyre who runs away as she does. That woman must exist somewhere in the world’s literature, but so far in my reading, Jane is the first, and her act is one of such power. Her choice—to live up to her moral code or to stay with the man she loves, despite his indiscretion—does not leave this steadfast and independent woman a choice. She casts out alone, and never mind that she ends up with him—those few days of her wandering the windswept landscape, hungry and alone, are some of the bravest I’ve read. (Abi Maxwell)
France Culture (France) announces a new radio adaptation of Wuthering Heights in 2020:
Juliette Heymann (...)
Devenue réalisatrice en 2010, tout en continuant parallèlement les adaptations, elle a mis en ondes de nombreuses fictions pour France Inter et surtout France Culture: L’Ile Saline de Daniel Danis, Le Daguet de Nicole Caligaris, Rien ne s’oppose à la nuit de Delphine De Vigan, Marilyn, dernières séances de Michel Schneider, Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë… ainsi que des cycles Yoko Ogawa et Laurent Gaudé. Elle travaille actuellement sur l’adaptation des Hauts de Hurlevent d’Emily Brontë, qu’elle réalisera en 2020.
Punchline Gloucester announces the local performances of the Chapterhouse Theatre Company production of Wuthering Heights.  Liv's Books & Light reviews Jane Eyre. Pousse de Ginkgo (in French) posts about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

0 comments:

Post a Comment