Branwell, the bicycle and more

Let's begin with an unexpected Branwell tribute. Fields of Vision Land Art celebrates the bicentenary of both Branwell Brontë and the bicycle with this Tour de Yorkshire land art installation:

More reviews of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as performed in York:

This is a solid piece of theatre and true to Anne Brontë’s concept, but somehow it doesn’t excite. Some rather stolid dialogue scenes at the Markhams’ farm don’t help, but also Elizabeth Newman’s production seems geared to the in-the-round (or octagonal) space of the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, where it began. There is some clumsy blocking for the proscenium stage, entrances and exits go for nothing, and too much of the action, especially in Act 1, is confined to a downstage strip where characters stand or sit in a half-circle. (Ron Simpson in The Reviews Hub)

Whereas the novel's revelations and discoveries come in the form of letters, here McAndrew enacts what she calls the first rule of theatre: "Show, don't tell". To do so, she divides the story into a first half where gossip and opprobrium rise in reaction to Mrs Graham's presence as a reclusive single mother in Yorkshire, while in the second comes "the reveal" – trailered just before the interval – where we learn what drove her north: her abusive relationship with her cruel, drunken rake of a husband Arthur (Marc Small).
On Amanda Stoodley's set of withered moorland dry stone walls that double as fireplaces, shards of Yorkshire humour around the Markham table make way for flint hardness in Elizabeth Newman's impassioned production, which fans the flames of the battle of inequality between wrongful men with all the rights and the women damaged in their path, while resonating with today's still imbalanced world.
Ben Occhipini's sound design of foreboding cellos and wild winds underpins the emotional tug of Pryce's resolute Helen, a singular woman misjudged in her time but now so ripe for reappraisal that Sally Wainwright has been commissioned to write a television adaptation. (Charles Hutchinson in The York Press)

Tribune de Genève (in French) reviews the Les Hauts de Hurlevent performances at the Théatre du Grütli:

La metteure en scène genevoise (acclamée notamment pour Macbeth’s Show, Héloïse, Les Aventures de Nathalie Nicole Nicole) prend garde à contourner dans sa transposition les pièges de la littéralité. Son chef-d’œuvre du romantisme anglais, on peut dire qu’elle l’a digéré avant de le porter à la scène. Adresses au public, narration prise en charge par des comédiens à rôles dédoublés, arbres généalogiques récapitulés à la craie, adjonction d’un personnage de touriste contemporaine servant d’émissaire au spectateur voyageur, nombreux sont les truchements qui préviennent la tentation naturaliste. Si bien que Camille Giacobino peut sans crainte donner libre cours à tous les excès sensoriels qu’elle contient comme une lave. Les corps se vautreront dans la fange, se contorsionneront de désir, courront et hurleront sans frein, pour tout aussitôt se prêter à la caricature
burlesque. (...)
On suit ainsi depuis une quinzaine d’années le parcours d’une artiste qui militerait pour la cause féministe, sans en adopter le discours ni les potentielles œillères. Seulement en aspirant à pleins poumons, sur le modèle de la Brontë, la complexité, les contradictions et les gouffres du sentiment amoureux. Et d’y inclure, sans pudeur, les soubresauts tant corporels que comportementaux causés par ses mouvements incontrôlés. Du caprice au désespoir, de l’ambition à la jalousie, du défi à l’agonie, cette corrida retourne par paquets la terre de bruyère. Et nos cœurs avec. (Katia Berger) (Translation)

A local poetry competition with a Brontë twist in Wilmslow:

A talented teenager from Wilmslow has won the Cheshire Poetry by Heart competition after using her own experiences of childhood confusion to inform her poetry.
GCSE student Ciara Allen was among 40 of the top young readers of verse nationwide to compete at the British Library, winning the title of Cheshire Champion.
Ciara, 15, chose 'Remembrance' by Emily Brontë in the pre-1914 section and 'Originally' by today's Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy in the post-First World War category. (Lisa Reeves)

What would a newsround be like these days without a Brontë mention in a Lady Macbeth review:

Yet the atmosphere in the mansion on the wild and windy moors is more Brontë than anything else, particularly when Katherine’s husband disappears to deal with a colliery disaster and she is left alone, bored and unsatisfied. Enter the handsome mixed-race groomsman Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), and an extremely raunchy affair begins in the carved wooden marital bed.
Sebastian is very much in the Heathcliff mould — indeed, Emily Brontë described her lead variously as “a Lascar” (a term used for Indian sailors coming to Liverpool) and a “dark-skinned gipsy in aspect” — and the colour-blind casting here may equally have its roots in Yorkshire’s past. (Kate Muir in The Times)

This ruthless, visceral, and wickedly subversive period piece lacks any input from The Bard, instead screening like a piano-wire-tight thriller as if penned by the Brontë sisters. It is an alarming film – one which refuses to extinguish any of the gruelling psychological and physical punishment – yet there is a bespoke beauty to all the callousness.  (Chris Haydon in Filmoria)

 Katerina begins to rebel, first through an affair with a farmhand, then through a series of dark twist and turns that eventually result in murder. With shades of classic novels like Madame Bovary and Zola's Therèse Raquin and a touch of Brontë-worthy gloom, the action has been shifted to the bleak Northumbrian countryside for the utterly compelling film adaptation, which sees Florence Pugh give a star-making performance as Katherine. (Katie Rosseinsky in Grazia Daily)

Es una película de época, pero menos glamurosa que sucia. No sé si 'Cumbres borrascosas', de Andrea Arnold, fue una referencia. Absolutamente. La película de Arnold era brutal. Mostraba la realidad de la época sin ambages. Era, además, muy orgánica y visceral. Me gustan esas cualidades. (Interview to William Oldroyd by Juan Manuel Freire in El Periódico) (Translation)

Circleville Herald gets poetic thinking of trees:

Any one tree, no matter where it lives, or how old it is, is special, not just because of its beauty or purpose, but also for the memories it is a part of. There is a great old oak tree where a young girl rested in the shade the first time she read Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and began dreaming of her own Heathcliffe (sic). There is a red maple where two young lovers etched their initials in the shape of a heart – and years later returned, where he greeted her on bended knee. (Amy J. Randall-McSorley)

The Australian mentions the Japanese signs on the Brontë moors:

For me one of the great tourist sights in the modern world is the sight of other tourists in unexpected contexts, such as Chinese women, hijabs slipping down their backs, earnestly following an English-fluent guide amid the desert mosques of Yazd, in Iran, or the Japanese who follow hiragana signs on footpaths around the Yorkshire Moors in search of the Brontës. (Pico Iyer)

Advocate traces the normalisation of lesbian spaces:

I never had to search further than the library at Mount Holyoke where girlfriends draped themselves over each other while studying Jane Eyre, or to any number of cafes in Northampton where conversations about the queer relationships on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Queer as Folk could be overheard. (Tracy E. Girlchrist)

Financial Times has a Q&A with author Mariana Enríquez:

What book changed your life?
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

Arcadia (in Spanish) interviews her:

Leyó cada tarde, sin olvidarse de seguir obsesivamente el orden en el que venían; primero estaba A sangre fría de Truman Capote, el segundo era una antología de Borges, el tercero Graham Greene. Después de incontables tardes solitarias, se encontró leyendo el último: Cumbres Borrascosas de Emily Brönte (sic). Este fue el inicio, una especie de epifanía que la dejó atrapada en el mundo de la literatura. (Ángela Martín Laiton) (Translation)

Creative Connection interviews painter and photographer Claire Luxton:

A: Who do you look to for inspiration?
C: Growing up I was lucky enough to have some super inspirational art teachers but it was primarily the works of Turner and Antony Gormley that inspired me to be an artist. Now I find inspiration in many places; from historical myths and the Brontë Sisters, to Quentin Tarantino and Alexander McQueen.

Télérama (in French) reviews the recent edition of Brontë letters in French:

Les lettres de Charlotte ne lèvent en rien le voile sur le secret prodige littéraire survenu au mitan du xixe siècle, dans une bourgade ordinaire du pluvieux Yorkshire — mais elles l'incarnent en une jeune femme vive et sensible qui, à 39 ans, rejoignit ses soeurs dans la tombe. (Nathalie Crom) (Translation)

Sometimes the stormy sea of Brontë mentions delivers some jewels. This one is priceless:

Cinco libros que toda chica debe leer (...)
Los libros son: “Orgullo y prejuicio” de Jane Austen; “Charlotte Bronte” de Jane Eyre (????????); captura todos los valores que hay (!!). (Frontera.Info) (Translation) 

Tempi (in Italian) has an article on teenage reads:

Con Tessa e Hardin è stato possibile rivivere emozioni che appartengono ad altre indimenticabili storie d’amore, diventate dei veri e propri classici della letteratura, come Cime tempestose, Orgoglio e pregiudizio e Anna Karenina». Che fa Sperling & Kupfer? Non solo ristampa Emily Brontë, Jane Austen e Lev Tolstoj in una edizione speciale chiamata “I classici di After”, ma li ricopertina pure con la stessa cover del “romanzo americano” «come fossero parenti del porno soft di Anna Todd», tuonò Michela Murgia, l’unica ad aver stroncato senza proverbiali snobismi un libro che «ha già fatto tutti i danni che poteva fare». (Caterina Giojelli) (Translation)

RP-Online (in German) reviews the film Siebzehn by Monja Art:

Die Jugendlichen treffen sich in einer Disco, die "Shake" heißt. Sie leben zwischen flachen und langgestreckten Feldern und sehnen sich nach Wien. Sie lesen "Madame Bovary", hören Wanda und Bilderbuch, sie schauen "Sturmhöhe" und trinken Bier und Schnaps, und sie wissen auch nicht so genau, ob alles bleibt, wie es ist. (Philipp Holstein) (Translation)

A reader of Fort Wayne News-Sentinel is reading Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next saga; Ultima Voce (in Italian) compares the world of Austen (via Pride and Prejudice) with the world of the Brontës (via Wuthering Heights). We read in Victoria Advocate how

A.D.D. Acting Company presented "Rapunzel," "Jane Eyre," and "Twain's Tales" on Thursday and Friday at Fellowship Bible Church.

Catherine Lowell lists several books inspired by Jane Eyre on The Millions. Mike Sheridan – Researcher and Writer continues posting about Jane Eyre. Read the Write Act and Shocks and Shoes review Wuthering Heights.