Obsessed with Wuthering Heights

London Theatre gives 3 stars out of 5 to Wise Children's Wuthering Heights.

The hard-working cast takes on many roles, save Lucy McCormick who plays the central Catherine throughout her life and after life. McCormick leans into the heightened take on the piece in her piercing wails and screams, and her performance is more tragic and tortured than haunting. Standouts in the company include Katy Owen, who is a veritable chameleon and comedienne extraordinaire, and Witney White, who brings a complex and pointed take on sometimes forgotten minor characters. 

Overall, this production has a bit of an identify crisis. While it’s refreshing to enjoy and even laugh at such a dismal story, when the play does try to convey gravitas, the moment loses some of its credibility. But for anyone who has struggled to make it through this enchanting-though-difficult novel, Rice provides a fresh take on the story that has the potential to entice a few lost readers. (Suzy Evans)

The Jewish Chronicle gives it 4 out of 5.

Ash Hunter and Lucy McCormick as one of literature’s most mutually toxic relationships are respectively brooding and unhinged. So much so in McMormick’s case that she gets licence to grab a mic and deliver a full throated angst, as if she is already possessed by the ghost she is destined to become. Or it might be the spirit of Kurt Cobain, such is are the suicidal depths the show reaches when it lunges abruptly into the realms of a grunge rock gig.

Rice’s production is finely balanced between playfulness and respect, not only for the source material, but for the dark themes that run through it. As Brontë’s characters die like flies from 18th Century illness, the role of Craig Johnson’s exasperated doctor is more of funeral director than medic.

Hunter is an excellent Heathcliff. His solid rage is never better illustrated than when the excellent Sam Archer as the lodger arrives at Wuthering Heights in the middle of a storm. And while Archer brilliantly conjures the power of the wind with a controlled physicality that sees him lean at impossible angles into the imagined gale, out steps Hunter’s Heathcliff as still as an oak’s trunk, impervious to elements, anchored by the mistreatment meted out to him since the death of the man who adopted him as a boy.

The book is constantly acknowledged. It is there in the hands of the chorus as they struggle to keep track of Brontë’s time-vaulting plot, and on the end of sticks, pages flapping like birds in the sky. This as much an homage to — as an adaptation of — a classic. Devotees can safely sip from this benign chalice. (John Nathan)

Camden New Journal reviews it too.

Rice finds light and humour in unexpected places – Owen’s mannered physicality as Isabella and her foppish Little Linton are a delight, while an impassioned rock solo from McCormick is energising.

Elsewhere, Rice imaginatively highlights the book’s visceral elements. The moors are evoked by a talented ensemble led by the mesmerising Nandi Bhebhe who serves as the main narrator. Their keening and acrobatic displays conjure extreme weather conditions and other effects.

McCormick ramps up Cathy’s madness as a ghost, shadowing Heathcliff in torn petticoats, never letting him forget what he has lost.

Stunningly staged, aided by Vicki Mortimer’s set and Simon Baker’s sound and video, with top-notch performances, this production takes Brontë’s classic to a whole new level. (Lucy Popescu)

The New European hate it:

 Emma Rice’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights at the National is, by contrast, witless and insensitive, and, worst of all, mind-numbingly boring. I sat watching it with a sense of growing resentment: this was 150 minutes of my life I was never going to get back.

It’s an example of a writer who is totally overcome by the sheer enormity of trying to put Emily Brontë on stage. It doesn’t help that Rice also directs, so there is no one around to tell her that what she’s doing isn’t working. (...)

Anyone who has read Brontë’s original work should stay well clear and anyone who hasn’t will find this boring and bewildering old tosh. (Tim Walker)

We also have lots of reviews of the film The Sky is Everywhere. From The Guardian:

The Sky is Everywhere has a nerdier sensibility – Lennie is a band geek obsessed with Wuthering Heights – which, combined with Decker’s atmospheric, off-kilter style, feels fresh. (Adrian Horton)

The Hollywood Reporter:

Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker (Grace Kaufman) initially bears little resemblance to Decker’s usual protagonists. The Northern California teenager spends the weeks and months after her older sister Bailey’s (Havana Rose Liu) death re-reading Wuthering Heights and penning sentimental notes in the forest behind her home. (Lovia Gyarkye)

The Wrap:

 References to books and music get piled on: Lennie is obsessed with Emily Brontë's novel "Wuthering Heights" and continually reads it while keeping Bailey's clothes and belongings all around her, and this rightly begins to irritate her grandmother (Cherry Jones).

Liu bears a marked resemblance to Merle Oberon, the beauteous star of the 1939 Hollywood version of "Wuthering Heights," yet such connections are ignored, just as Bailey herself is ignored, even though the whole film is supposedly about her absence and how it affects the people she left behind. (Dan Callahan)

Los Angeles Times:

It’s a dramatic tale fit for a Brontë heroine, perfect for the “Wuthering Heights”-obsessed Lennon. (Katie Walsh)

The Scotsman:

Grace Kaufman takes the lead as Lennie, a talented teen musician reeling from the death of her older sister Bailie the previous summer. Already orphaned, she lives with her grandmother (Cherry Jones) and her quasi-hippie uncle (Jason Segel) in an idyllic woodland house in Northern California’s Enchanted Forrest where she obsesses over her dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights and slums around in her sister’s clothes surrounded by the ephemera of their shared childhood. (Alistair Harkness)

South China Morning Post:

Intoxicated by music, poetry, and the romantic ideals of Emily Brontë’s tortured lovers Heathcliff and Cathy, Lennie recklessly becomes romantically entangled with two young men simultaneously: new classmate Joe (Jacques Colimon), a vivacious and charismatic musician, and Jay (Pico Alexander), the brooding, sullen and equally grief-stricken boyfriend of the recently deceased Bailey. (James Marsh)

Broadway World reviews An Evening without Kate Bush at Soho Theatre in London:

In her show, superfan Sarah-Louise Young pays tribute not only to the iconic music but also to the star and her loyal supporters. [...]

Instead, she encourages us to find our own connections with Bush and the songs before sending us into the night with the sound of "Wuthering Heights" in our ears: "Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home. Let me in your window..." (Franco Milazzo)

Still on stage, Keighley News is looking forward to Jane Hair:

Jane Hair: The Brontës Restyled sees the siblings working as hairdressers, whilst pursuing their creative dreams.

In the Buglight Theatre production, Emily is a slam poet and Anne a political blogger, whilst Charlotte has just sold a script to Netflix.

"This lively interpretation of three literary superstars aims to introduce new audiences to the sisters and their work," says co-writer Kat Rose-Martin.

She jointly penned the play with Kirsty Smith, who grew-up in the Worth Valley.

"I was surrounded by the Brontes' faces on tea towels and postcards – it’s easy to forget how much determination, hard work and energy was required to earn their place in the literary world," says Kirsty.

The tour includes a March 17 matinee at Haworth's Old School Room.

For all venues and dates and to book tickets, visit buglight-theatre.com/janehair. (Alistair Shand)

Actualidad Literatura (Spain) interviews writer Marta Abelló.

AL: ¿Qué personaje de un libro te hubiera gustado conocer y crear? 

MA: Jane Eyre, por su fuerza y su eternidad. (Mariola Díaz-Cano Arévalo) (Translation)

According to The Telegraph and Argus, Top Withens is one of 'Six of Bradford district's most romantic places to propose'.

Top Withens, Haworth

Top Withens is a ruined farmhouse near Haworth and gives couples the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of one of literature's most famous romances, Wuthering Heights. Top Withens is said to have been the inspiration for the location of the epic love story written by Emily Brontë and lies on the Pennine Way, which is a popular walking destination offering beautiful far reaching views of the Bradford region. (Daryl Ames)

The Telegraph and Argus also recommends a trip to the Brontë Parsonage Museum this weekend to see the new exhibition Defying Expectations.