Emily Brontë’s arm

Musical Theatre Review gives Wise Children's Wuthering Heights 3 stars out of 5 disliking most of what others before have praised.

Patrons attending future productions – after Bristol, Wuthering Heights embarks on a major national tour until the end of May 2022 – might well be advised to arrive an hour late, thus missing the deafening opening, the early screech-a-thon approach to the dialogue, and choreography for the six-strong chorus of Moors (don’t ask) straight out of 1960s Top of the Pops. But once Heathcliff and Cathy have separately declared their love for each other in the first tender moments of the evening, the narrative emphasises the revenge motif in the second half with an agreeable reduction in volume. There are even welcome moments of comedy in the bizarre courtship between Little Linton (Katy Owen) and Young Cathy (Witney White).

Ian Ross’ score, played on stage by musicians Sid Goldsmith, Nadine Lee and Renell Shaw, also discovers an occasional gentler note as it moves away from the earlier unimaginative, pounding rock.

Rice’s take-no-prisoners approach to the ill-fated love affair, and the subsequent family entanglements, may be on an entirely different plane from famous film and television versions of the past, but alongside sound and video designer Simon Baker she does provide some unsettling visual tricks as well as a hint or two of pertinence for today.

At heart, though, Wuthering Heights remains the story of Liverpool docks orphan Heathcliff and spirited heroine Cathy, torn apart by the mental and physical cruelty of those around them. Ash Hunter handles the vocal challenges as Heathcliff with aplomb, although he is a slightly more remote figure than usual. Lucy McCormick, in contrast, is never less than full on as Cathy, bellowing out her anger and frustrations at maximum volume, before drifting through the second half as Brontë’s symbolic ghost-at-the-window apparition.

You get the feeling, Kate Bush – of ‘Cathy Come Home’ vocal fame – would approve. (John Houseman)

Irish Examiner asks writer Michael Harding to speak about the culture that made him. And one of his choices is:

Wuthering Heights

The classic novel of all times is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. It’s impossible for me to rationalise it as an all-time favourite choice (and I would go through periods where I’d have other favourite books). Possibly because it’s a love story. It’s gothic so it has that air of Dracula darkness. Also the love between the two of them, Catherine and Heathcliff, transcended human love. It's a monumental story.

The Conversation has an article on how 'Peatland folklore lent us will-o-the-wisps and jack-o-lanterns' and Wuthering Heights is also mentioned.

Northern European storytellers have often relied on peatland landscapes to capture a frightening or spooky mood or atmosphere, such as in English classic novels like Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights or Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. Such tales drew on longer-standing oral and cultural traditions that looked to peatlands as liminal spaces, places that appealed to a sense of the uncanny and the supernatural. (Derek Gladwin)

The New Yorker interviews writer Fleur Jaeggy and they bring up a bit from her book The Water Statues.

In the first part of “The Water Statues,” Beeklam glimpses a man “dressed in dark clothes with a white band at the neck,” who “was walking in the garden, as though, after having named every single tree, he’d just let go of”—

“Emily Brontë’s arm.” (Dylan Byron)

Junkee sings the praises of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights and shares a grunge cover by TikTok user @boychikpea.

Of course, the crowning achievement of the Kate Bush canon is ‘Wuthering Heights’. A re-telling of the classic gothic fantasy by Emily Bronte, the song ripples with yearning, transforming a particular experience — loving someone who you’re not sure loves you in quite the same way — into something universal and triumphant. There’s a reason it’s been a mainstay of the radio and contemporary culture for decades now: there’s nothing quite like it.

As it turns out, the song is also highly adaptable. It’s been covered multiple times by an array of different artists from diverse backgrounds, but perhaps never as uniquely or as passionately as a new grunge cover of the song going around on TikTok. (Joseph Earp)

'Charlotte Brontë’s Love Of The French Language' on AnneBrontë.org. And finally, please remember that there are only a few days left to reach the goal to try and save the Honresfeld Collection. Please donate if you can afford it.