At times, we were watching a polished work of art

The New York Sun reviews Emma Rice's Wuthering Heights at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn.

Gone are the “classic” casting choices — the innocent strings behind a dashing Laurence Olivier. There is no Ralph Fiennes to brood over a fragile Juliette Binoche. Not even Tom Hardy, a significant step up in the “weird” department, would fit this bill. Alastair Coomer and Sam Jones’s casting choices honor Brontë’s intent but embrace the creative casting trends of the modern day. Heathcliff, played by Liam Tamne, is of Indian descent, following cues in the text like, “dark skinned gypsy” and “a little Lascar” — a 19th century term referring to Indian sailors. 

One of their modern, gender-bending choices was also one of their best. The protean Katy Owen made each of her appearances a highlight, moving seamlessly from Isabella Linton to Little Linton, and then to the Moors. Eleanor Sutton overcomes the pervasive darkness as Young Cathy with her gentle, insuppressible light. 

Lucy McCormick, who plays Catherine Earnshaw, is her antithesis. She’s in constant torment, her face contorted into a Brechtian silent-scream more often than not. “I once had a dream I was in heaven,” she laments, “but it didn’t feel like home.” When her breakdown comes, we don’t quite believe it, just like we never quite root for Catherine and Heathcliff. The audience is left wondering: Is this because of their selfishness and depravity (they both revere the Roman emperor and “magnificent tyrant” Nero)? Is it a lack of dimension in their performances? Is it the necrophilic sex scene? Or is it something else? 

For all of the stagecraft and laudable performances, the antiheroes’ wanting relationship sometimes mirrors the show as a whole. As I watched the players emulate the wind and don flower crowns and tangle themselves in jump ropes, I was chasing away thoughts of acting school — crawling on hands and knees as the professor told us to emulate our “favorite elements.” At times, we were watching a polished work of art. At others, it was as if we were watching the University of Michigan’s production of “Peter and the StarCatcher,” but with a budget. 

The ending, however, overcomes any disbelief. Heathcliff and Catherine have died and are replaced by their offspring, who break generational cycles with color and kindness. Young Cathy puts a book in white wrapping and hands it to Hareton, her love, like a white flag. “Paper, not blood.” A gift from her to him. And from Emily to us. 

“They halted to take a last look at the moon.” Everyone, even the dead, were finally at peace. (Grace Bydalek)

Playbill has compiled several reviews and shares some pictures of the production.

On the other side of the pond, West End Best Friend reviews The Moors at The Hope Theatre giving it 3 stars out of 5.

If you’re looking for an appropriately creepy play for the spooky season, look no further than the UK professional premiere of Jen Silverman’s The Moors – currently playing at the Hope Theatre.

Silverman’s play, inspired by the letters of Charlotte Brontë, weaves threads of the Brontë family biography around narrative snippets from Jane Eyre to create a new irreverent and absurd gothic thriller.

Meredith Lewis plays the unassuming Emilie who arrives to fulfil a governess position in the house of the sharp, cruel and cold Agatha (Imogen Mackenzie), sweet, childish, Huldey (Kenia Fenton) and their enigmatic maid Marjory (Tamara Fairbairn), only to find that her employer and student are nowhere to be found. In the background of this mysterious domestic drama is a poetic subplot that harkens back to Jane Eyre involving the household dog (Peter Hadfield) and a moor-hen (Matilda Childs) forming a fraught co-dependent relationship. (Livvy Perrett)

Sophie Lewis writes about her book Abolish the Family. A Manifesto for Care and Liberation on LitHub.

To be sure, humorless, straightforward, quasi-fascist paeans to the heteronormative hearth and the aspirational industriousness it breeds exist in great numbers, from sentimental Victorian fiction to patriotic Hollywood thrillers and, increasingly, Christian-nationalist policy platforms. But an overwhelming amount of equally mainstream art and literature is also about family ideology’s “discontents.” Anti-family politics isn’t unthinkable, in other words—it’s everywhere! Art and writing about family life is usually at the very least satirical, and often downright dark. Think of King Lear, Tristram Shandy, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Madame Bovary, Beloved, Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Simpsons, or Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, to name only the first (forgive me) “household names” that come to my mind.

Fine Books & Collections shares the highlights from the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair.

Book fair highlights include rare first editions of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake; Kamisaka Sekka’s stunning 1909 Momoyogusa, considered to be the finest Japanese design book of all time; and a 1916 photograph of Pablo Picasso by Jean Cocteau. (Rebecca Rego Barry)

Brussels Brontë Blog has an account of a recent talk on death in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley and Villette by Dr. Edwin Marr.