Pop culture Wuthering Heights

Express gives 4 out of 5 stars to Wise Children's Wuthering Heights.

The performances are set to stun with Lucy McCormick’s Catherine and Ash Hunter’s Heathcliff leading the charge - she wilful and passionate, he brooding and vengeful.

Wuthering Heights is on at the National Theatre until March 19th. 

Atmosphere is provided by lighting, music and a huge video screen depicting dark scudding clouds across which black birds flit like portents of death.

Whenever the novel’s interrelated characters start to pile up, the ensemble sits like old-fashioned schoolchildren scratching names on slates to keep us informed.

The kinetic energy of the performances help the near three hours pass quickly.

McCormick’s highlight is a raging rock song that is more Janis Joplin than Kate Bush and, following Catherine’s death, she spends the rest of the play silently observing the action as a ghost.

The dark, gothic cruelty of the novel is lightened with humour, mainly through Katy Owen who plays both Isabella Linton and her sickly son.

Rice’s calculated primitivism can sometimes seem awkward but in this case it provides the perfect framework for Brontë’s tale of tempestuous passion. Fab. (Neil Norman)

British Theatre gives it 4 stars too.

Central to the story is Heathcliff, and if you check the dictionary definition of “brooding” you’ll find Ash Hunter’s name there, an excellent performance of a difficult, complex character, his ethnicity and mysterious origins, hinted at in the book, central here as an explanation of his outsider status. Lucy McCormick is a steely Catherine, punky, vulnerable, resisting all and refusing even to save herself. The music by Ian Ross perfectly captures each mood, from pounding punk to folk to angelic chorus. The ensemble move terrifically as the Moor, but Nandi Bhebhe’s voice as Leader of the Moor was a little weak at my performance. Sam Archer is a brilliant Lockwood and Edgar Hilton, perfect comedic skills and tragedy, and once again Katy Owen brings her extraordinary physical and comedy skills to the fore as Isabella Linton and Little Linton, quietly breaking your heart too. But the stand-out performance, for me, is Tama Phethean as Hindley Earnshaw, but particularly as a muscular, rough Hareton Earnshaw, the true hero of this tale, a destroyed man restored by love and Witney White’s beautiful Catherine Linton, their story demonstrating love blossoming among the wildness- the ending is gorgeously romantic.

It’s not perfect, frustratingly so, because it almost is. It’s a tad long, particularly the 100-minute first half, and there is a little too much Banshee screaming. Occasionally there is too much going on, sometimes less is more. (No pun intended!) This is more than balanced out by stage pictures that will stay with you, and performances that tell the tale with skill. Rice’s best production since creating Wise Children, catch it here or on tour. (Paul T Davies)

The Spectator reviews An Evening Without Kate Bush and reminds it readers of the fact that,

Her breakthrough song, ‘Wuthering Heights’, was released despite the scepticism of record executives who felt it was too weird to prosper. They were over-ruled by Bush, and she became the first British female artist to write and sing a number one hit. (Lloyd Evans)

While CNews (France) recommends 5 songs by her, the first of which is of course Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights

Impossible de ne pas citer ce titre de Kate Bush, qui a marqué le début de sa carrière. Le morceau apparaît d’abord sur son premier album, «The Kick Inside» (1978), avant d’être réenregistré huit ans plus tard pour sa compilation «The Whole Story» (1986). Elle l’avait écrit à l’âge de 16 ans, soit quatre ans avant sa sortie, après avoir vu l’adaptation cinématographe des «Hauts de Hurlevent» d’Emily Brontë (dont le titre original est «Wuthering Heights»). (Manon Michel) (Translation)