Let's start with a review of something that is now Wuthering Heights 2026.
LincsOnline reviews Shoestring Theatre’s Jane Eyre at Stamford Arts Centre.
Taking his seat to watch the opening night of Jane Eyre at Stamford Arts Centre, the chap next to me glanced at the stage and commented to his companion: “I didn’t know it was set on a building site.”
While I’ve no doubt he was being waggish, he had a point.
The stage for this classic gothic romance was decorated with nothing more than scaffolding forming a platform at the back, and an attic room to the side - this requiring plenty of imagination, since mad Mrs Rochester could have strolled through any of the four open sides.
Another slight bugbear, before we begin, was the treatment of the audience regarding the issue of ‘madness’. While in real life I’m all for a modern approach to mental health issues, I’m willing to give Charlotte Brontë a break, not least since she was writing fiction, and in the 1840s.
You’d have to be a particularly uptight and unworldly sort to tut at her characterisation of Mr and Mrs Rochester, and yet there’s pretty much a full-page apology for it in the programme.
Fortunately, Stamford Shoestring Theatre can be relied upon for solid acting, and Chloe Taylor gave the title character a powerful mixture of reserve and passion, prim principles and a desire to tear down social constraints.
Ellie Corrigan, who proved her comedy timing in last year’s production of The 39 Steps, played four parts rather brilliantly, having great fun with lively, insouciant Adele, Mr Rochester’s French ward - although I’m surprised there wasn’t any hand-wringing in the programme about Gallic stereotypes.
Hats off too, to Stephanie Thompson-Collins, on stage throughout the two-hour production as Mrs Rochester, writhing and gurning in her scaffold attic while the plot unfolds front and centre.
She could have looked hammy and conspicuous, but instead keeps this strange element of the production simmering in the background - so strange it also requires a page in the programme explaining what the blazes it means.
The cast of nine play more than 20 roles between them, without noticeable mishaps or missing lines. Impressively - and this applies to Corrigan and Michael Hughes in particular - several switch from playing children to adults, and paupers to posh folk, changing outfits, accents and demeanours seamlessly over the course of the play.
Mr Rochester’s dog is perhaps a human role too far on stage, and although Hughes makes it comic and well-observed, the playwright Polly Teale, who created the stage adaptation in 1998, should have found an attic for the hound and thrown away the key.
Shoestring’s Jane Eyre is full of fine acting and tells Brontë’s story well enough, but the scaffolding and the avant-garde ‘embodiments of inner feelings’ is theatre trying too hard to be ‘theatrical’ and forgetting what entertains us ordinary sorts. (Suzanne Moon)
And now for some more reviews of Wuthering Heights 2026:
Did I love it? No. Did I enjoy being transported to a world where I could forget about impending midterms and get lost in the messy ride? Absolutely. This film may not be a cinematic masterpiece but for two hours and 16 minutes, “Wuthering Heights” had an entire room of people — Stanford students, middle-aged couples and teenage girls alike — hysterically laughing, gasping and sobbing together. (Chloe Loquet)
The wonder of it is that Wuthering Heights, which was declared to be “unquestionably and irredeemably monstrous” upon publication, exists at all, its creative origins forever obscured by the brief and enigmatic life of its author. The novel, published in 1847 under a male pen name (Ellis Bell), was written by Emily Brontë, a 27-year-old virgin so reclusive she makes Emily Dickinson seem positively sociable. Brontë, who died a year after her book came out, somehow managed to call forth from her vivid, anarchic imagination one of the darkest love stories in Victorian (or any other) literature, creating an unprecedented Demon Lover in the portrait of Heathcliff and an obsessed madwoman in that of Catherine Earnshaw. The erotic undertones are unmistakable and all the more powerful for being suppressed. For all its heaving drama, the plot of Wuthering Heights is remarkably simple, even primitive. It is the age-old one of a soured romance, of childhood sweethearts who are foiled by the adult reality they grow into. Filmmakers and television producers have continually returned to this elusive work ever since it was made into a movie in 1939, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. This adaptation, written and directed by the controversial Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn), is characterized as “loosely inspired” by the novel—ergo, at liberty to take liberties. The adult Cathy is played by the blonde, blue-eyed Margot Robbie, whose acting chops are in full view once again. Heathcliff is played by Jacob Elordi. Influenced by the aesthetics of soft porn and high fashion, this is a movie with its sights firmly fixed on Gen Z. It works, in its edgy stylistic way, and it should sell heaps of tickets. (Daphne Merkin)
“Wuthering Heights” is not a love story. All-consuming love leads Catherine and Heathcliff to be selfish and cruel to those around them. The film was unfiltered, twisted, dimensional, passionate and beautiful. Through the fog and through the hills, travel to your local AMC or Regal movie theater to see “Wuthering Heights” today. (Talia Scarpa)
Will Wuthering Heights ever be made true to the literary version – of which I have actually read – and at the same time be worthy of the largest screen with the best sound and indeed soundtrack? One may never know. Is this perfect? No. Is this the best adaptation? For me, yes. Despite the hate online, Wuthering Heights remains a gorgeous hit grossing at the time of publication, approaching $160million and counting. (Piers)
When details are altered to the point where the messaging of the book and core ideas are lost, these movie remakes aren’t just misinterpreting the value of the original text for a modern audience. Oftentimes, they are also forgetting things like the commentary embedded into a story that made these books so controversial or beloved, and ignoring the reason why these classics have been adored across generations. (Alyssa Mathews and Reese Neiger)
The Week gives 3 stars to Charli XCX's Wuthering Heights album:
As in the movie that inspired it, “there’s messiness here, and messiness feels like the point.”
A contributor to
InStyle has written an article on how Wuthering Heights 2026 is influencing her spring wardrobe. 'An English Major’s Take on the Wuthering Heights Film' on
Her Campus. Another contributor to
Her Campus discusses 'The Transcendent Yet Forgotten Aspects Of Wuthering Heights'. For
The Commonwealth Times, 'Yes, the whitewashing in ‘Wuthering Heights’ is a big deal'.
Concerned Women for America wonders 'How should we, as Christians, view this latest adaptation?'
KCRG reports that 'Everyday Iowa Reads Wuthering Heights'.
Gold Radio features Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights.
Salve Regina University shines the spotlight on a group of students who performed at the recent Jane Eyre concert in New York.
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