'Extraordinary modernity and imaginative power'

Evening Standard gives 4 stars our of 5 to Wise Children's Wuthering Heights.

More impressive than any individual turn, though, is the sense of a company playing together with complete trust, in tune with each other and the audience. Nandi Bhebhe, sporting a crown of twigs, leads the movement as the embodiment of the moor itself, and two actors step in and out of the backstage band as needed. Vicki Mortimer’s set revolves around a twirling door, deftly signifying both Heathcliff’s exclusion and the physical and emotional confinement to which the women in particular are subject. Design, music, video and puppetry – notably dogs represented by skulls mounted on scythes – are seamlessly integrated.

Rice’s production is an involving, full-throated pleasure to watch, that captures the love and anger that courses through the novel, and the austere grandeur of the weather-lashed Yorkshire landscape in which it’s set. It highlights too the extraordinary modernity and imaginative power of a work written by a rural curate’s daughter in 1847. Shame, then, that a lack of judicious editing means that it slightly outstays its welcome. (Nick Curtis)

4 stars out of 5 from Time Out, too:

But even though her take on ‘Wuthering Heights’ includes every single stylistic quirk and hallmark you expect it to – a full house of Emma Rice bingo – after about 30 seconds you remember that Rice is simply a very, very good storyteller. Her toolbox of fourth-wall-breaking japery, song, dance and puppetry serves her brilliantly well when adapting the right source material, and she is particularly excellent at detangling knotty plots.

Here we have a chorus of actors playing The Moor, which is intrinsically funny, especially when Nandi Bhebhe’s Leader of the Moor announces that this is what she is to Sam Archer’s Mr Lockwood, bewildered tenant of the tyrannical Heathcliff.

But they also fill the stage with frenzied action that mirrors the windy, wily landscape. And quite often they just explain to us what’s happening. At one point we’re given a comprehensive rundown of the story’s confusing myriad of minor characters, many of whom have ‘Linton’ in their name somewhere, and it’s really bloody handy.

But any irreverence is effortlessly countered by the production’s evocation of the novel’s elemental wildness. Atmospherically, it’s a triumph, with Ian Ross’s thrilling live score built on roiling percussion and screeching strings paired with Simon Baker’s projections of tumultuous skies. It surges and crackles with energy: at moments of peak emotion, the music and the story howl like twin furies.

And if the secondary characters are treated with a fair degree of levity – in particular there are two brilliantly absurdist turns from Katy Owen – the central ones are played deadly serious. Performance artist Lucy McCormick is inspired casting as doomed heroine Catherine, defiant of social norms but eventually crushed by them. There’s none of the provocative humour of her solo act, but she retains her uncomfortable intensity and she really knows how to move and sing, burning the stage up like a prime Courtney Love in one frenzied musical number just before death. And that’s not the end of her: she remains to stalk the stage like a smudge-eyed ghost, weighting the atmosphere with her presence.

Ash Hunter’s Heathcliff is Byronic and brooding. But he’s also played by a mixed-race actor sporting a Caribbean accent. Debate over Heathcliff’s intended ethnicity has raged over the years, and Andrea Arnold’s acclaimed film adaptation of ten years back portrayed him as Black. But Hunter’s take more explicitly ties his hatred of polite society to not only racism, but also colonialism. I definitely I don’t think it’s a stretch to see this Heathcliff as a sort of deliberately intended male counterpart to the damaged, mistreated first Mrs Rochester from another Brontë novel, ‘Jane Eyre’. (Andrzej Lukowski)

Also 4 stars out of 5 from The Upcoming:

The central characters are undoubtedly the two lovers, but the surrounding cast are an equal force driving the narrative – superbly demonstrated here as an endeavour by the whole company. There are no empty spaces, either on the physical stage or in the flow of the script. The acting is supported and integrated with choreographed movements, at times full dance numbers and an original score that gives the viewer goosebumps. A small orchestra sits upstage, providing live music that harmoniously blends with the lines and the gestures. It’s an enveloping show that fills the eyes and the heart with rhythmic melodies and words. 

The wit and poise of the cast are smoothly balanced: Katy Owen’s (Isabella Linton and Linton Heathcliff) fun contrasts with the sturdy Ash Hunter; the ever-present and dynamic Nandi Bhebhe (The Moor) is accompanied by a small ensemble who nicely link together the sequences and fill out the set.

The first act features some whimsical outbursts and at times the pace is slowed down to make room for the intangibility of the contrasted love. More interesting is the second half, where the daughter’s and son’s existences cross.

The costumes and all the props are particularly well curated, among them animals and puppets. The use of multiple storytelling devices is not new to Wise Children; combined with sensational performances, the result is a spirited play. (Cristiana Ferrauti)

And finally 4 stars out of 5 too from Theatre News:

Lucy McCormick (Catherine) has an extraordinarily beautiful voice belting out rock-style anthems and crying through the wind. Her twisted energy fills the vast stage and her savage love is a perfect complement to Heathcliff’s unspoken desire. Whilst Emily Bronte kept Heathcliff’s origins and ethnicity a mystery, only that he was adopted from Liverpool docks, Ash Hunter’s brooding Heathcliff is re-framed as an unaccompanied minor with a Caribbean accent contrasting with the rest of the casts Yorkshire, which considering Liverpool was at the heart of the British slave trade makes a lot of sense. Seen through this lens, the motivation for his revenge is even greater, and his silent rage has a psychological realism fitting for a contemporary audience. (Chloe Billington)