Just the ticket for a cold February evening

The Arts Desk gives 3 stars out of 5 to Wise Children's Wuthering Heights.

“If you want romance,” the cast of Emma Rice’s new version of Wuthering Heights say in unison just after the interval, “go to Cornwall.” They’re using the modern definition of romance, of course – Emily Brontë’s novel is full of the original meaning of "romantic", much wilder and more dangerous than anything Ross Poldark gets up to.

Rice’s anarchic adaptation preserves that feral quality, with the Moor itself telling the doomed love story of Cathy (Lucy McCormick) and Heathcliff (Ash Hunter), but doesn’t do enough to keep up its energy.

The opening is more Kafkaesque than Brontësque (though perhaps the former was inspired by the latter). [...]

It's never a good sign when you need a family tree to understand a play. But Rice keeps everything ticking along well enough that it doesn’t really matter who’s whose aunt or nephew or cousin/wife. She’s transformed Brontë’s servant narrator, Nelly, into the personified Moor, which functions as a Greek chorus, unspooling the tragedies of the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Nandi Bhebhe is spellbinding as the Leader of the Moor, managing to be both a powerful elemental presence and a nurturing friend to the human characters. [...]

Wuthering Heights is brilliant when it’s good – but it’s good often enough. It’s not Rice’s fault that the source material is as bleak and seemingly endless as the real-life Moors (the show runs to just under three hours). People are always dying, getting married, getting married and then dying, bullying each other, being born, or dying in childbirth. It’s like Love Island, but nobody even pretends to be happy. 

That is, until we get to the third generation of these weird intertwined dynasties. At the end of the play, Lockwood returns to find that Cathy and Hareton have salvaged a loving relationship from the wreckage of the cruelty that Heathcliff doled out to them (ignore the fact that they’re first cousins, it’s the 1840s). It makes for a jarring conclusion, but again, that’s Brontë’s problem.

This is an intensely theatrical show, in the sense that it draws attention to the fact that it’s a play. The actor playing Lockwood has to be reminded that he needs to step back into his initial role for the story to end. The stage managers are part of the show – the wings are open to the elements, so we can see them chucking props to the cast. As people die, their names are written on slates and held up towards the audience like tombstones, and their actors merge back into the Moor.

Wuthering Heights is a joint venture of the NT, Wise Children (Rice’s production company), Bristol Old Vic and York Theatre Royal. It’s a story told by a community, onstage and off. It embarked on tour in autumn 2021; sadly it’s not stopping on the Moors, although there was a run in York in November. Roughly a third of it drags; roughly two thirds is just the ticket for a cold February evening. Take your chances. (Laura De Lisle)

The Times recommends it once again:

Wuthering Heights

Few directors depict tangled passion with quite the evocative wallop of Emma Rice. And few directors are better at coming to the audience’s aid when all those tangles get hard to negotiate. So you may well be swept away by all the romance, harshness and laughter in Rice’s Emily Brontë adaptation with dance and puppetry and plenty of songs. Yet you may just get lost here and there too, superbly though it is all played, and be glad that characters bring out blackboards reminding us just who is related to whom out on those wily, windy moors. (Dominic Maxwell)

Reviewing The Sky is Everywhere, BFI also mentions the Wuthering Heights reference.

Lennie is a shy 17-year-old with musical aspirations to study at the Juilliard and become a clarinettist, and a profound love of Wuthering Heights. (Thomas Flew)

Washington City Paper is more critical of the reference.

Here is a film allergic to subtext. Lennie’s favorite book is Wuthering Heights, and instead of letting viewers deduce why she is drawn to such an intense story of love and loss—not that it would take much deduction—it constantly explains itself. First, Lennie tells us why she loves it. “Just like Cathy and Heathcliff, I’ve lost the one person who understood me.” Later, someone shouts: “Do you want to end up like Cathy and Heathcliff?” Then in a moment of catharsis, she destroys the book in an effort to break free from the patterns of her past. This insistence on highlighting, underlining, and italicizing every subtlety leaves the viewer unable to bring any of themselves to the story. If the film literally describes your life, you will love it. Everyone else need not apply. (Noah Gittell)

CBR recommends '10 Movies To Watch If You Like Pride & Prejudice' and one of them is

Jane Eyre Is Faithful Brontë Adaptation

Jane Eyre is the 2011 film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel with the same title. Jane Eyre stars Mia Wasikowska as the title character and Michael Fassbender as Edward Fairfax Rochester. Fassbender is recognized for his super-villain role as Magneto in X-Men: First Class. (Cassidy Stephenson)

Silhouette Donna (Italy) recommends watching Jane Eyre 1996 on TV tomorrow.

Jane Eyre – domenica 13 febbraio (ore 21.00), Iris

Regia: Franco Zeffirelli

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, William Hurt, Anna Paquin, Elle Macpherson

Anno: 1996

Trama: Jane Eyre è una povera orfana che trascorre l’infanzia con una zia crudele e la giovinezza in un istituto con una preside perfida che la prende in odio. Una volta cresciuta, trova un impiego come istitutrice in un’imponente casa di campagna di proprietà del misterioso Mr. Rochester. Jane si innamora di questo triste uomo, che sembra nascondere un segreto oscuro. (Laura Frigerio) (Translation)

El Correo (Spain) thinks that Wuthering Heights is an example of 'l'amour fou'.

En un breve resumen de los amores locos en la literatura universal, caben citarse el de Florentino Ariza por Fermina Daza en 'El amor en los tiempos del cólera' de García Márquez, que reproduce el patrón de las 'Cumbres borrascosas' de Brontë y de 'El gran Gatsby' de Fitzgerald en el afán del héroe por hacer fortuna para alcanzar la clase social de la mujer a la que ama. (Iñaki Ezkerra) (Translation)

Another article in the same newspaper goes along the same lines but in connection to the 1939 adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

En la pantalla, el amor empecinado que acaba mal brilla a lo grande. A Heathcliff, su idolatrada Catherine se le muere en los brazos en 'Cumbres borrascosas'. (Luisa Idoate) (Translation)

Gothic winter reads/films in Cope (Spain).

En definitiva, engloba todo aquello que no podemos tocar ni ver y, por supuesto, comprender. Su presencia nos acelera el corazón y nos seca la garganta, y de pronto un grito se congela en nuestra boca, como el visitante que en su alcoba se queda aterrado ante el espíritu de la señora Linton. [...]

A veces, cuando de noche el viento agita los árboles o llega una tormenta, si releo a Mary Shelley o Emily Brontë; si escucho a Ryuichi Sakamoto o veo “El Exorcista”, una parte de mí vuelve a esa época y sonrío porque la niña de antaño da la bienvenida a sus viejos amigos y, como a los vampiros, lo invita a entrar. (Esther Castells) (Translation)