You might call Branwell the Zeppo Marx of the Brontë Family...Like the young crooner whose main function was to serve straight lines to his star wisecracking brother Groucho, Branwell Brontë, though he achieved a bit of literary success before succumbing of alcoholism, is quite often the forgotten sibling, next to his star sisters Anne, Charlotte and Emily.Composer/lyricist Miriam Pultro generously offers the Brontë big brother a spotlight moment or two in her exuberant and enjoyable rock concert musical Glass Town which plays its last three performances at The Tank this week (tickets $25), but it's really about the sisters.Named for a fantasy world created by all four siblings through individual literary contributions, Glass Town on stage is a collection of original songs that express themes found in Brontë novels, explore their familial relationships and most effectively, hone into the artistic need to create ("Breathe") and the desire to be remembered ("Forever Known").The author assigns each sibling a contemporary musical style to reflect their lives and works, with herself stationed at the keyboard playing Charlotte as a hard rocker. Playing bass, Katrien Van Riel's Emily is an introspect alt-rock vocalist and Emma Claye's Anne is a heart-on-her-sleeve indie pop specialist. Rhythm guitarist Branwell, played by Eddy Marshall, appears a bit emo at first, but after a few beers he transforms into a swaggering bluesman, who, perhaps a bit ego-bruised by the success of his sisters, seems intent on taking over the proceedings and bringing his act into the audience.Playing behind them the night I attended were Music Director Alex Petti (guitar), Laura Zawarski (violin), Anthime Miller (cello) and Emma Kroll (drums).The few spoken word moments in the piece are highlighted by a letter from Charlotte rejecting a suitor's marriage proposal, politely noting, "Mine is not the sort of disposition calculated to form the happiness of a man like you."Under Daniella Caggiano's direction, the lead quartet always looks like they're having a lot of fun being with each other and making music as a family, and I had a lot of fun watching them. (Michael Dale)
5. The Eyre AffairIn this version of Great Britain circa 1985, time travel is routine. Our protagonist is Thursday Next, a literary detective, who is placed on a case when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel.Bonus: The Eyre Affair is the first in a seven book series following Thursday. (Emily Burack)
Charlotte Brontë echoed Wollstonecraft through the musings of her literary protagonist. In “Jane Eyre” (1847), Jane insists that “women ... need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do.” (It’s worth noting that Charlotte Brontë initially wrote under a male pseudonym, Currer Bell, in order to get published.) (Kabi Hartman)
If you’re obsessed with Bridgerton, chances are you also enjoy other 19th century English romances from throughout literature, too — say Pride and Prejudice, or Wuthering Heights. What is it about brooding, borderline toxic (OK, in Heathcliff’s case, full-on toxic) men that readers and viewers can’t get enough of? Jonathan Bailey, aka Anthony Bridgerton himself, asked himself the same question ahead of Bridgerton Season 2. “It’s interesting to get behind these Heathcliff and Darcy characters and explore why romantic male figures are so harsh and toxic towards women,” he said in a March 20 interview with Radio Times. [...]And if Bailey’s comparison to literature’s most beloved, grumpy heroes has you intrigued, you’re in luck — because he means it. One production still from Season 2 teases a very soaked Anthony à la Colin Firth in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice miniseries. (Here’s hoping for a moment as dreamy as the 2005 hand flex, too.) And yes, the whole premise for this season — an enemies-to-lovers situation between Anthony and Kate (Simone Ashley) — is sure to ring delightfully familiar for Jane Austen and Brontë sister stans. (Grace Wehniainen)
It seems to be aimed at a younger audience who have never seen the BBC’s sublime Pride and Prejudice from 1995 – which in today’s binge-and-move-on-to-the-next-thing culture is practically prehistoric – or the same broadcaster’s superlative 2006 adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Pat Stacey)
Who thought we’d be here again? Sanditon went from definitely canceled to “it’s coming back for at least two more seasons, but without that main guy.” We last saw Sanditon in the U.S. in February 2020. It’s fitting that as so much has changed in our lives, so the writers seem to have tossed 90% of the show’s storylines in the garbage and started over. A move I applaud! It’s very Into the Woods-after-intermission. What happens after the Jane Austen plot runs out? Well, clearly, we move onto Charlotte Brontë. But first, let’s talk briefly about our absent leading man. [...]Alexander Colbourne is our Mr. Rochester of the season. Again, I think it is very fun that they’re taking an Austenian show and injecting tropes from later literary periods. He’s the wealthy widower recluse who needs a governess for his child and niece. He’s fine. I’m hoping the writers learned from season one and don’t just have him yell at Charlotte all the time and then go, “THUS IS LOVE.” (Alice Burton)
The Brontë shrine is to employ its first person dedicated to championing the museum as a centre for contemporary arts.As BrontëBlog readers know perfectly well, the Brontës are alive and well in the 21st century, so this new post at the Parsonage will be a very interesting one, we are sure.
The job will be to reveal how the Brontë sisters and the wider story of their family, is an inspiration to 21st century writers and artists.
And to help fund the three-year post, the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth has won a grant from the Esmee Fairburn Foundation.
Brontë Parsonage Museum manager Alan Bentley, said: "The grant has given a significant boost to the groundbreaking work to establish the Parsonage not just as a heritage museum but as a place of excellence for contemporary arts."
The arts programme has been in operation since 2005 and had attracted internationally renowned artists and poets like Cornelia Parker, the poet laureate, Andrew Motion and Paula Rego.
The programme of events for 2007-2008 has already been drawn up and includes Amanda Dalton, who will act as poet in residence to mark National Poetry Day, which will be celebrated at the Parsonage tomorrow.
Best selling author Margaret Drabble, who has written about how landscape has influenced writers like the Brontës, will come to Haworth on Wednesday, November 28.
She will be reading her work and discussing the influence of the Brontes.
Joining her will be poetry award winner Wendy Cope who will be discussing her Whitbread poetry award poem If I Don't Know."
Novelist and prize winning writer, Tamar Yellin, who lives in Stanbury, will speak about being a jew in Bronteland, on Wednesday October 17. (Clive White)
Last night critics of the group said children needed a healthy balance in their reading. Others said the book burnings were a sinister reminder of similar events in Nazi Germany.The book burning in Don Quixote didn't burn his imagination, if anything it fuelled it even more. We hope these children - and their mothers - will eventually enjoy books in general, not just shiny, happy books.
But children's charity Kidscape condemned a campaign which would lead to young people 'missing out on the magic of literature'.
Director Michele Elliott said: "There is a distance between you and a book which allows you to experience emotions and think about what's happening - but it's not happening to you. That's incredibly healthy.
"There has to be a balance. I would not feed children a complete diet of morbid books."
Award-winning children's author Kevin Brooks, whose books have a reputation for emotional rollercoasters and disturbing cliffhangers, said the proposed burnings were reminiscent of the Nazi regime.
"Controversy and bad stuff is everywhere," he said. "It is far better to find out about it in books where it is written with some feeling and poetry and power." (Andrew Levy)
Jane Austen was a provincial Englishwoman who wrote six novels about courtship and class before dying unmarried in 1817 at the age of 41. She was an astute observer of social customs, but subsequent writers who considered Austen's work to be mannered and lifeless included Charlotte Bronte, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain.You would think rather than a mere opinion, what Charlotte wrote was a curse, vowing she would sell more books than Jane Austen ever after. We leave the 'inspiration for her fiction' bit to the experts, who kindly explain that that's simply not true.
Yet these days, Austen probably outsells them all, in part because her books have been adapted into countless movies. She also was the subject of a recent biopic, "Becoming Jane," which suggested that her star-crossed life was the inspiration for her fiction. (Joe Williams)
Dog breeder Jocelyn (Bello, who’s marvelously earthy here) is oblivious to the throbbing passions of biofueling book-clubber and sci-fi nerd Grigg (Dancy, reportedly next appearing in Brontë) while fretting about her recently abandoned friend (Brenneman). (Marrit Ingman)Hugh Dancy will supposedly play George Smith. Variety also echoes the news in the cast in an article on Icon Entertainment International.
Icon’s theatrical slate includes “Push,” starring Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning and Djimon Hounsou, “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” directed by Christopher McQuarrie, and “Bronte,” starring Rebecca Hall, Natalie Press and Evan Rachel-Wood. (Archie Thomas)We hear today of a book that includes Brontë references. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an article on Rudolph Delson's debut novel Maynard & Jennica.
Then there is Jennica, a transplanted Californian who loves Manhattan but has little luck in employment or romance. She is a relentless self-analyzer, yet also a perennial romantic, always hoping for the lucky fate that has proved so elusive in the past.Also Past the Popcorn chats with Daniel Housman about the movie he's adapted, The Treatment, and we find out there's a reference to Wuthering Heights in it as well.
As she says, "I don't think my life is as sad as, like, 'Wuthering Heights' or 'Love in the Time of Cholera,' or Dave Eggers, or whatever. But I am the only person I know who is practically 30 years old but who has never had a relationship last more than a year. Obviously I am doing something wrong. That, or I am unlovable." (John Marshall)
I really tried in the school-teaching scenes to show his soul, and those are my writing—they don’t exist in the book at all.The Lancaster UAF blog has a post on Terry Eagleton, author of Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës.
Oh, really?
DH: No, he’s not depicted actually teaching at all in the book. And when we first started to adapt it, that was the first thing I said: “That’s how we’re going to relate to this man: as we see him with kids.” And there’s another scene that didn’t make the cut—and is available on the DVD—that was meant to go first. There was meant to be a little bit of an arc seen in how he interacts with the kids, identifying with the protagonists in the books that he’s teaching. In the first scene, that was cut, he’s teaching Wuthering Heights; he’s identifying with Heathcliff, the romantic, doomed, self-pitying hero. And he’s giving one of the students a really hard time, almost like his therapist, Morales, does with him. And he’s giving this stuff to the kids: “You cannot be a fully-grown child.” And in the second scene, he’s teaching Chekhov, and there’s this beautiful poetry in Chekhov, and all this sympathy for these very flawed characters that don’t always fit in with our modern view—and he’s telling the kids to back up and give these characters some room with their flaws. And finally, looking at The Stranger, and about taking responsibility and existentialism—and he’s connecting with the students the most. So one of those scenes is missing in the end, but that’s where I was trying to reveal his personal arc. (Greg Wright)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane AustenCategories: Books, Brontë Parsonage Museum, In the News, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (you may be interested to read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which is something of a 'prequel' to Jane Eyre)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (you may be interested to read Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman, who was inspired by the themes of Wuthering Heights)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Lancaster is starring in York Theatre Royal's production of 'Wuthering Heights' from 2nd June. He plays four characters; Old Earnshaw, Linton, Edgar Linton and Joseph which sees him enacting three deaths. Lancaster says; 'the key is to try and die in as many different ways!'For a deeper look at this story, Associated Content has just added Fatherhood in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff and Edgar: A Tale of Two Fathers by Tina.
Joseph, Lancaster's only character to survive the duration of the play, is written as having a thick Yorkshire accent, and as a Macclesfieldian, Lancaster says, 'I'm having a go at it! There's not a lot of it, and it's quite easy to pick up and there's plenty of Yorkshire people about to pick it up from.'
'Wuthering Heights' is seen as a classic love story but is this version staying true to its roots? 'We've kept to the story, it's not been modernised in what we wear and it's set in the time it was, the only difference is really that we have a lot of narration in, so I think it's good for people who don't know the story so well'.
When Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding of LipService realised that it was also the 150th anniversary of the death of Charlotte Bronte, they could hardly turn down the chance to dust off their crinolines and press their bloomers in a reprise of one of their best-loved shows.Aren't you tempted? Do try and make it there if you're in the area.
Withering Looks is an up close and personal look behind the forbidding exterior of Haworth Parsonage, where the three Bronte sisters - well, two actually, Anne"s just popped out for a cup of sugar - lived and worked.
But to compensate, there are more ravaged heaths, tormented souls, mysterious neighbours, and maniacal laughter from the attic.
Peopled with many familiar characters, and some, quite frankly that LipService have made up, this is a potted potty classic to savour.
Withering Looks won a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award and the Critics' award at the Edinburgh Festival.
Tickets are priced between £8 and £10 and are available from the Borough Theatre"s box office on 01873 850805. (Iwan Davies)
There are in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights all the elements of intense and spectacular drama. Jane Thornton's sensitive adaptation has pared down the action, eliminated the superfluous Lockwood and shared narrational duties among the cast. This works particularly effectively, especially when characters are relating the circumstances of their own lives - in the third person.Categories: Theatre, Wuthering Heights
Lorna Ritchie's imaginative set resembles something like a ruined mill, its metal staircases and structures still festooned with remnants of wool. It is immensely atmospheric when the moon is rising and the wind howling, and a perfect place for the remorselessly harrowing events to unfold, as the 5-strong ensemble whisks the audience across the Yorkshire moors, down the generations and between the houses of the Earnshaws and Lintons.
Jessica Harris at times bears a marked resemblance to Emily Bronte as the two Catherines, mother and daughter, the one wayward and self-destructive, the other insouciant and repressed. Harris excels in both roles bringing to life Emily's belief that pain and suffering are an integral part of love.
What is Heathcliff: a monster or a martyr? Joel Fry hardly answers this and is certainly not the archetypal Heathcliff, if such exists, bearing in mind the role has been played by a variety of types from Olivier to Cliff Richard. Yet, he undoubtedly brings a sense of the 'moorish, wild and knotty' to which Emily referred.
The hard-working Marshall Lancaster superbly differentiates by voice and posture all the characters he plays, Catherine’s effete husband, Edgar Linton, Heathcliff's sickly offspring, Linton, the old man Earnshaw who precipitates the whole tragedy by introducing into his house the boy Heathcliff, a cuckoo in the nest, and Joseph the ancient retainer.
Nick Figgis modulates easily from the drunken Hindley, who brutalises Heathcliff, to his son, Hareton, who in turn is brutalised by Heathcliff; and the splendid Kate Ambler has equal facility in emotionally charging Isabella Linton, Frances and the ubiquitous Nelly Dean.
An exceptional feature is the interpolation of some of Emily's most haunting and profoundly moving poems, beautifully set to music by Richard Taylor and sung in parts by the cast. Nothing perhaps could better bring home to the audience the atmospheric tumult of Wuthering Heights, the product of Emily's fevered imagination.
Tautly directed by Sue Dunderdale, this ambitious adaptation of an English classic shouldn't be missed. (Andrew Liddle)
York Theatre Royal's Wuthering Heights has a new (bad) review published in The York Press:Check this and this previous posts for more reviews. This comment also provides a different and more positive view.SERIAL spoofing double act Lip Service mischievously sent up Wuthering Heights in Withering Looks; fellow jokers Oddsocks had Cathy and Heathcliff in a permanent strop on the Moors in a tinsel-and-tantrum Christmas version a few years ago.
The jokes were intentional on those occasions, but how come sniggers could be heard at the York Theatre Royal press night on Tuesday? Such a response would have had Emily Bronte skipping supper once more for a lonely stomp across the heather.
Playright Jane Thornton may have cut her teeth on comedy, yet the reaction to Sue Dunderdale's ragged production of her 2003 adaptation was not born of Thornton's comedic prowess.
Granted, Marshall Lancaster's cameo characterisation of the perennially gloomy old Joseph - jaw set like Wildred Brambell's Steptoe - was intentionally humorous, and so too were the wimpy actions of the excellent Lancaster's weakling Linton.
However, it was the production's forlorn struggle for intense passion that sparked the dismissive half-time chatter over the scrum for free sausages and burgers. One name was on everyone's lips: Heathcliff, and not since Cliff Richard's hammy musical 11 years ago has an actor looked so uncomfortable in this elemental role.
Joel Fry was talent-spotted by Dunderdale while at RADA and is destined for his film breakthrough in 10,000 BC next year, but it could be another 10,000 years before he is asked back to York. He has the look of a young Jimi Hendrix, even dressing not unlike him, but he mumbled and shuffled and slouched, and his diction was as languid as his gait.
Almost perversely, Fry is at his loudest when singing flat on his back on Lorna Ritchie's bizarre set of strips of ripped sheets, metal steps and strands of wool, with not a Yorkshire moor in sight. Save for its sense of height and wind, it is as characterless as Fry.
Thornton says she focused on the passion in her adaptation, and the still inexperienced Fry needs to show a whole heap more, particularly as he is the only actor who plays just one role in this five-hander. He has to be the play's tempestuous force, around which everyone takes their turn to die, but he isn't.
Jessica Harris's Catherine Earnshaw/Catherine Linton lack variety of emotion and vocal tone, and she is too light. Yet Thornton's fast-moving script, with its multiple narrators and swift scene and costume changes, can work well, as proved by Nick Figgis and Kate Ambler joining Lancaster in rising above the problems.
Richard Taylor's musical settings of Bronte poems are a successful innovation, but no moor, no more, Wuthering Heights is a worrying low in a misfiring year at the Theatre Royal. (Richard Hutchinson) (Picture: Jessica Harris and Joel Fry in Wuthering Heights at York Theatre Royal) SOURCE
Some months ago we already published a review of the performances of Polly Teale's After Mrs. Rochester in the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Now the production has been performed in the Cave Hill campus, in Barbados and the Barbados Advocate talks about it:Directed by Brian Heap, and featuring the University Players of the Mona Campus, the production looked at how easily one person's real life can be far more fantastic than fiction and how many times the most resonant fiction can function as an escape from a sordid life.Categories: Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights
Both tragic 'and yet darkly funny' in subject matter the production was based on the life of eccentric Dominican novelist Jean Rhys. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea a book chronicling the story of the 'madwoman in the attic' character from Charlotte Brontë 's immortal Jane Eyre.
Hilary Nicholsan played the elderly Jean, a distinguished and yet dishevelled novelist cloistered in her Devon room, getting quietly drunk and narrating her life to the audience. At her side sat actress Nadia Khan, as Bertha Mason, insane, animalistic and wretched.
Khan's role is pivotal to the plot as both the character from Jane Eyre and Jean's own dark alter ego.
Rhys, just like the fictional Mason, grew up in the West Indies and later lived in England. Both women suffered poverty, injustice, and a dependence on men. Teale's plot suggests that Rhys, born Ella Rees Williams, had an obsession with the character because of their similarities.
Thus the audience of the play see young Ella played by Maylynne Walton reading Jane Eyre on one side of the stage, while several actors play out the scenes on the other half.
It is these meta-fictional aspects of the play that made After Mrs Rochester so complex and yet so engaging, for it questions the nature of history and of literature. Where exactly does the author begin to embellish historical fact and where exactly does reality and fiction separate?
In a country where the stories of important historical figures are still cloaked in legend (think Bussa, Rachel Pringle) this is especially fascinating.
Yet, one did not need to know anything about the two novels or about Rhy's life to enjoy the play, which ran along on very strong performances from most of the cast.
As a feminist theatre piece the women actors had far more to work with. Going from naïve 13-year old Rhys to the character in her mid-thirties Walton gave a nuance and complex performance. As the child she was able to convey Ella's awkwardness and her naiveté and later as the young woman she showed Rhys' narcissism, intelligence and deep insecurity. With an amazing control over her body language and voice Walton's performance was often riveting, tragic or amusing depending on what was needed.
So too Khan, who despite having her full head of hair cover her face for the two hours of the play still connected with the audience and Nicholsan who remained central, even as the narrator.
Student Nadean Rawlins switched from straight-backed maid Meta to childhood friend Tite so seamlessly you could believe that she was two actresses. Similarly Carla Moore fully embodied cynical British friend Maudie but did not seem as sparkling as Stella the wife of Author Ford Maddox Ford.
Noelle Kerr had some trouble projecting her voice as Jane Eyre, but was a dead-on with the accent as a young child and later as Jean's daughter.
This left male actors Karl Williams, Jean-Paul Menou and Rooney Chambers with just enough room for character development to deliver understated but believable performances.
Dark and moving, After Mrs Rochester was well worth the ticket price, Kudos to EBCCI for striving to bring good theatre both local and otherwise to the Barbadian audience. (Khalil Goodman) (Picture: Here cast members (from left) Karl Williams, Hilary Nicholson, Carla Moore, Nadian Khan and Maylynne Walton act out a scene.) SOURCE
The story it’s self [sic] is clever adaptation of the novel. The character of Mr. Lockwood (the narrator) has been completely removed and instead the actors would often pause, while one of them would act as a narrator to move the story on. This worked very well as it meant that things could be explained in a few words rather than having to waste time acting them out. Also, it helped to move the chronology on, as there were times when a few years would past, before the actors would take on their characters again to pick the story up.And topic of the reading habits of men has returned with a vengeance. Yesterday, as you'll remember, it was featured in The New York Times. Today the subject is brought up in The Telegraph. Apparently men don't read books written by women, although this blog serves as witness that this is not always the case.
The play included some music, of which the lyrics which I was pleased to discover were from Emily Bronte’s poems. The programme describes their use best by saying it gives Emily Bronte "a voice on stage". And yes, we do get to hear Marshall sing at various points in the play. He has a fair singing voice, but mostly he sang in duets or in a group with the other actors.
There were only five actors in the whole play and so this meant that most of them, except Joel Fry who played Heathcliffe [sic], had to switch characters at various points during the play. They were aided when doing this by slight changes of costumes. The costumes themselves were very simple browns and neutral colours that would have fitted into the time period, for example Marshall wore simple shirt and a waistcoat over his trousers. When they changed characters they then could simply add an apron or a little jacket over the top and become someone else. (clarey_h)
Proof of this comes from various surveys. Over the last couple of years, for instance, academics Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins have been asking men and women to name their "watershed" books, the works that changed the way they felt about life.Ambaz looks at some of the men who have played Rochester on screen. Her favourite? Toby Stephens.
The women's list includes plenty of titles by men: Lord of the Rings, Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22 all get a name check, alongside "female" titles such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice.
Contrast this with the male list: as with women, men like Tolkien and Salinger; men also like Camus and Orwell. What men don't like are books written by people who wear skirts: only one book by a woman made it into the male list, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. And some have suggested Lee's book only found itself on the roster because the men believed, thanks to her ambiguous name, that Lee was a chap. (Sean Thomas)
As we have reported previously, today (June 2) is the premiere of a new theatrical adaptation of Wuthering Heights in the York Theatre Royal. These are the details:The York Press publishes an interview with Marshall Lancaster:02 - 23 June 2007
York Theatre Royal presents
7:30 PM with 2:00 PM/2:30 PM matinees
After show discussion: Wed 13 JunWuthering Heights
Written by Jane Thornton, adapted from the novel by Emily Brontë
Directed by Sue Dunderdale
Music by Richard Taylor
Designed by Lorna Ritchie
Lighting design by Ciaran Bagnall
With Jessica Harris, Joel Fry, Marshall Lancaster, Kate Ambler and Nick Figgis.
Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff are brought together as children and although they are social unequals they are one in spirit. Gradually torn apart by the forces that surround them, Heathcliff is eventually driven away from Wuthering Heights. When he eventually returns it is wreak vengeance on those he holds responsible, with epic and tragic results. Set against the wild, stormy, North Yorkshire Moors in the early 1800s this is a fast moving, classic tale of lost love, passion and revenge.
More information:From tomorrow he plays a quartet of roles - Edgar Linton, Linton, Old Earnshaw and Joseph - in Jane Thornton's stage adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights at York Theatre Royal.(...)
Now Wuthering Heights brings Lancaster to Yorkshire.
"My agent mentioned it, and I'd worked with the director Sue Dunderdale on Peak Practice. It was just a guest part in it, as a garage owner whose wife had something wrong with her belly. I had to go into the doctor's surgery and kick up a fuss, so I did that, enjoyed it and I'm really glad Sue saw me for Wuthering Heights."
In rehearsal, he has enjoyed the multiple-role playing in Thornton's adaptation with its cast of only five."
I like the multi-roles; you can feel a bit schizophrenic, but it's about finding
the differences without making them too different, " he says.
"In comedy you can go as far as you like with differences, but with this, you have to make little differences, so we've been honing them down, rather than letting them become big caricatures.
"That can be particularly difficult when Joseph is about 80!" (Charles Hutchinson)
As we have posted before, next June (2-23) a new production of Wuthering Heights will be performed at the York Theatre Royal. The York Press carries today an interesting article about it:SUE Dunderdale surveys the task of directing Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's windy, wild tale of ill-fated love and vengeance.In the picture: Wuthering Heights cast of Marshall Lancaster, Joel Fry, Jessica Harris, Nick Figgis and Kate Ambler. (Credits)
"It's a fantastic story and it's a Yorkshire story," says Sue, whose production of Jane Clifford's adaptation opens at York Theatre Royal on June 2.
"All the cast, the stage management and me, we all went up to Haworth, walking up to Top Withens, which they say may be the site of Wuthering Heights, though it's now a ruin.
"It was the first time I'd been there in 20 years; the last time I was there, there was a French film crew making a film about the Brontes. Isabelle Huppert was in it, of course; she seems to be in every French film."
Revived by Yorkshire pudding and onion gravy, Sue returned to the work in hand: staging Clifford's compact adaptation of the tragic story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, first performed on the much smaller Hull Truck stage in 2003. "Damian Cruden the Theatre Royal artistic director had already decided on using this version, partly because it has a cast of only five, which has its advantages and disadvantages and we're focusing on the advantages," says Sue.
"I've gone for a young cast because it's very much a teenage love story. They feel that if they don't marry, they will die. Cathy married at an extremely young age; she was 17 when she married Edgar, and once she dies, Heathcliff feels dead too. He may be walking around, but he feels dead inside. Cathy died partly because she stopped eating, and so did Heathcliff."
Records show the average age of death in Haworth at the time the Brontes lived at the Parsonage was 26, the same age as the cast's average age. "I think that makes it right that it's a very young company," says Sue.
Among her casting selections is Joel Fry for the mixed-race role of Heathcliff.
"I think he's an extraordinary actor. I spotted him at RADA three years ago, when I was working on a course on acting on camera. (...)
No doubt she will be looking to bring out the intensity in Joel Fry that she found in the book. "It's the intensity that strikes you. When I read the novel again, it was like reading one of the Russians. It's like reading a Yorkshire version of Dostoevsky. It's not Jane Austen," says Sue.
"It's the expression of her soul. When you read that all Emily Bronte's life was an interior life, where all she did was walk on the moors, you realise her freedom was in her imagination and in her spirit, and that's what draws you in.
"No two people should be more together than Cathy and Heathcliff, but she makes the major mistake of her life and that destroys them as they miss out on each other.
"We may all like to pretend that we've never done that in our lives, but in her writing Emily has no such pretence. Cathy's decision destroys her life and lives around her."
What Emily did was to frame the story in her inner being and in the world she knew, says Sue.
"Edith Wharton wrote about the same subject, so did Henry James, and they were very different from Emily's spirit, which was close to Dostoevsky, but they all deal with missed opportunities - but Wuthering Heights is more cruel than the rest, extremely cruel.
"There's a grimness and a dryness that make it so Yorkshire," Sue says.
"It's all about being thwarted and thwarted is such a Yorkshire word, isn't it!" (Charles Hutchinson)
A new Wuthering Heights Theatrical production is announced for next June in York:Some days ago we presented The Collecting Place Blog where the new project of photographer Simon Warner and the Brontë Parsonage Museum can be followed:Marshall Lancaster, who played DC Chris Skelton in the cult BBC1 cop drama [Life in Mars], is to appear as Old Earnshaw, Joseph, Edgar Linton and Linton in Jane Thornton's adaptation of Wuthering Heights at York Theatre Royal from June 2 to 23.
Rehearsals for this repertory production start on May 8 under the direction of Sue Dunderdale, who directed last year 's world premiere of Pam Gems' Mrs Pat at the Theatre Royal.
Tickets for Wuthering Heights go on sale this week on 01904 623568. (The York Press)
The Collecting Place project is now underway at the Brontë Parsonage Museum . A small group of sight impaired young people are working with Simon Warner on a photographic collaboration which will result in an exhibition at the museum in May/ June. The exhibition will feature large format negatives and prints of Brontë related landmarks and landscapes (see attached poster) created using a walk-in camera obscura. Please take a look at the project blog which includes postings from the participating children and is a wonderful record of progress so far. The blog will chart the development of the project over the coming weeks – see http://www.thecollectingplace.blogspot.com/Some new (and nice) pictures have been uploaded.
Unless explicitly said
