Wuthering Heights
10/04/2010 - 02/05/2010
Production Details
Wuthering Heights has been the basis of nearly a dozen feature films and TV movies, the most famous being the 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. The Fortune’s stage production will be a stylish, fascinating, 21st century interpretation of this beloved Victorian classic.
Wuthering Heights is a saga of two Yorkshire families in the remote Pennine Hills. The doomed relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw is brilliantly brought to life in Jane Thornton’s stage adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel.
The wildness of the growing obsession between the wilful Cathy and the ‘gypsy-brat’ Heathcliff, is reflected in the wild beauty and extreme weather of their environment. One in spirit but social unequals, Heathcliff and Cathy are gradually torn apart by the forces that surround them.
Following Cathy’s marriage to neighbour Edgar Linton and her early death in childbirth, Heathcliff dedicates his life to wreaking vengeance on those he holds responsible, with epic and tragic results spanning two generations.
Wuthering Heights is on one level a story of love, one which transcends even death, and is also a penetrating insight into the lives of two isolated and damaged families.
“Of all the adaptations of Wuthering Heights that I’ve seen – film or theatre – this was thebest. Wonderful!” – Dr Juliet Barker (world authority on the Brontës)
Don’t miss this year’s classic production, featuring Tim Foley, Anna Henare, Richard Dey, Sara Best and Simon Vincent with musical direction by Clare Adams; set design by Peter King; costumes by Maryanne Wright-Smyth.
Fortune Theatre
April 10 – May 2
Show Times:
Tues – 6pm; Wed – Sat 7.30pm; Sun – 4pm
Book Now: phone 03 477 8323
email boxoffice@fortunetheatre.co.nz
or website www.fortunetheatre.co.nz
CAST
Heathcliff: Tim Foley
Catherine E, Catherine L: Anna Henare
Hindley, Hareton, Servant: Simon Vincent
Old Earnshaw, Joseph, Edgar Linton, Linton: Richard Dey
Frances, Isabella Linton, Nelly Dean, Voice: Sara Best
DESIGN
Set Design: Peter King
Costume Design: Maryanne Wright-Smyth
Lighting Design: Peter King
CREW
Stage Manager: Rebekah Sherratt
Production Technician: Rebecca De Prospo
Lighting Operator: Southern Lights: Alan Penno
Rigging: Southern Lights: Alan Penno, Janis Cheng
Set Construction: Peter King, Matt Best
Graphic Design: Matt Best
Graphic Image: Paper Rock Scissors
Production Photographer: Victor Jarque
The heaven and hell of the heart
Review by Terry MacTavish 14th Apr 2010
The Fortune has discovered the undying appeal of stage adaptations of great literary works, with productions of Jane Austen’s Emma last year and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre the year before. But how successful is it to meld these two art forms?
Simple retelling of plot was never going to convey the genius of writers like these. Wuthering Heights in particular, with its imaginative power, unearthly characters, poetic force of language, brilliantly handled time scheme, and its layered narration, the prosaic blending with the melodramatic … There is indeed nothing to compare with it.
So what can theatre offer? Film gives at least the potential for gloriously bleak, rugged Yorkshire landscapes, and some stage adaptations have employed more than twenty actors on detailed sets contrasting the rough, wild Heights with the civilised residence of the Lintons. Here we have only five actors on a set that must serve for all. Yet somehow our imaginations must be fired by this unequalled story of love that is stronger than death.
Director Lisa Warrington, Dunedin theatre’s greatest asset, shows how it is done with inspired staging, the actors utilising the space with confident freedom.
The stage set by Peter King is perfect: a precarious skeleton of a staircase twists its way up to a lone windswept tree, with tattered foliage constantly fluttering against a wild sky. A sturdy chest does service as a fallen tree trunk, the window sill of a mansion, and a bed for the dying.
Piles of books provide all the props needed, put to superb use as everything from the practical, as stepping stones, or tiles to be laboriously hammered down, to the symbolic, as the means by which characters through education are separated or united. Playing cards are used to show the transfer of property through gambling, and a chair thumped onto the floor succinctly indicates a locked door.
Costumes by Maryanne Wright-Smythe provide just the right bold primary colours for the strong visual images presented, such as two contrasting marriage portraits, with the addition of swathes of white material that can morph from wedding veil to swaddling for a baby, then to a shroud. These apparent restrictions allow the actors to switch freely between their multiple roles, delineating character or situation with assurance.
Inevitably we compare this play with the previous literary adaptations: Polly Teale’s brilliant device of the madwoman as Jane Eyre’s repressed passionate alter-ego; or Michael Fry’s charming framing of Emma, as a performance by young people entertaining themselves some years after Austen, which enabled the author’s gentle irony full rein in the direct delivery to audience of narrator’s comments.
But in Wuthering Heights the characters of Cathy and Heathcliff, even the Lintons, are far too self-involved to be credible as they turn from a passionate scene to remark calmly on their feelings or describe some off-stage action.
Though his inclusion would have added one too many confusing layers for a theatre audience, I miss the presence and commentary of the pedantic narrator Lockwood. His conceited fussy ordinariness throws into sharp relief the extraordinary inhabitants of the Heights, even though he ludicrously assumes he is somewhat akin to Heathcliff in his shunning of society.
The second narrator Nelly Dean, who in the novel tells much of the story to Lockwood, is therefore even more significant in this stage version. On her rests the burden of representing the world as we know it. Her commonplace mind, ranging from petty to kindly, filters the passions of the protagonists.
Warrington’s interpretation works hard to maintain Nelly’s sensible balance, while enhancing the supernatural tension with spirit appearances by dead Cathy, lit with a spooky purple glow and accompanied by howling wind. Without Lockwood to rub the ghostly child’s wrist against broken glass, we are presented with an opening scene that references Kate Bush, all streaming draperies and piercing cry. After this initial image of Cathy as ghost, the stage play follows the chronological order of events, though Bronte’s brilliance shone in her mastery of an intricate time scheme.
Heathcliff, a vagabond gypsy waif from the slums of Liverpool, is brought by Mr Earnshaw to Wuthering Heights on the Yorkshire moors, a wild romantic landscape that the boy seems to exemplify. He is detested by Earnshaw’s son Hindley, but soon finds a soul mate in the daughter Cathy, then only six years old. Soul mate is a term used loosely today – never has it been more accurately applied. The passionate bond between the two, deeper than sexual, drives the action of the novel. On stage it is shown by spirited scamperings on the heath (though I would rather like to see the pair climb Pennistone Crag!) and one tender moment of dancing.
On Earnshaw’s death, Hindley reduces Heathcliff to serf status, brutalising him so that when Cathy is taken up by neighbouring gentry the Lintons, she quickly realises that marriage to the heir Edgar is her only chance to be Heathcliff’s salvation. This despite her confession to Nelly, their faithful housekeeper, that, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same… Nelly, I am Heathcliff.” Overhearing (beautifully lit against the red proscenium arch) only that it would degrade her to marry him, Heathcliff leaves, not to return until several years later. By this time Cathy and Edgar are married, and he himself has succeeded in attaining wealth and the air of a gentleman.
His plans for revenge, which include Edgar’s foolishly infatuated sister, cause pregnant Cathy to self-destruct in one of the most appalling deathbed scenes ever written. Warrington’s cast do convey something of its power. Bathed in red light, Heathcliff clings to the stage as if it were the earth in which she is buried, uttering the famous incantation, “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! Be with me always…drive me mad!…Oh God! I cannot live without my soul!”
The second half, dealing with the next generation, who must redeem the anguish of their parents, barely escapes being an anticlimax, but again the physical action and urgent energy of the performers hold our attention. The acts of senseless cruelty and violence are well exploited. Except in dance, I have rarely seen the ground used with such confidence. Heathcliff remains a sinister, almost satanic force, tempting Cathy’s daughter away from the safety of her home, while some moments of humour lighten the mood.
The actors form a well-disciplined and very competent team. Several have previously given flesh to literary characters at the Fortune.
Timothy Foley has matured since his performance as Mr Knightley, and makes a dark and dangerous Heathcliff. Although the onstage time for his transformation seems too short, he makes credible the change from waif to grown man who returns for revenge, because “God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall.” Foley creates a Heathcliff born of the wild moors, rough and brooding with the saturnine Byronic quality the Bronte sisters admired.
Anna Henare demonstrated her passionate potential as the madwoman in Jane Eyre, and again shows physical courage playing Cathy, Heathcliff’s match in headstrong wildness. She succeeds in making Cathy both attractive and repellent. And as Cathy’s gentler daughter, also named Catherine, she remains a vivid force on stage, tossing her ringlets defiantly, though enmeshed in Heathcliff’s plots.
The most versatile actor is talented Simon Vincent, changing his body convincingly for old Earnshaw, for the comical, hypocritical servant Joseph, for childish Edgar growing into learned, dignified manhood, and finally for grotesquely pathetic and peevish young Linton, offspring of the unhappy mating of Heathcliff with Edgar’s infatuated sister. The characterisation of each is wonderfully distinct.
Sara Best doubles as Hindley’s sickly wife and Edgar’s silly sister, but it is as Nelly Dean she really comes into her own. She convincingly provides the sanctimonious but comforting bedrock of all their lives, and her sweet singing makes a welcome contrast to the raw, ugly emotions splashed round the stage.
Richard Dey has quiet strength both as drunken, desperate Hindley and as his son Hareton, ‘gold put to the use of paving stone’, giving the latter a rustic charm as he develops from oafishness into a possible suitor for the second Catherine. Dey also is credited with the scintillating fight choreography.
All manage well with a range of Yorkshire accents (important, as the Yorkshire moor setting is intrinsic to plot and theme), and all respond to the pronounced physical demands of the direction. One of the chief strengths of Warrington’s production is the ease with which the action tips over into violence, and the slick timing with which a dropped child is caught, or an attack by fierce dogs evoked.
So though the play script struggles to do justice to what for me is the world’s greatest novel, impressive directing and tight teamwork do convey something of Emily Bronte’s feeling for her beloved moors and what the heart owes to them. Elsewhere she wrote:
“What have these lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell.
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling,
Can centre both the worlds of heaven and hell.”
It is great credit to the actors, the design team and above all the director of Wuthering Heights that we are left with an inkling of the heaven and hell of the heart.
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Pace too quick for passion
Review by Barbara Frame 14th Apr 2010
There are five actors: Timothy Foley, Anna Henare, Richard Dey, Sara Best and Simon Vincent. They are all on the stage for the full two hours, and their job is to tell us the Wuthering Heights story from beginning to end. They do this through numerous short scenes connected by passages of narrative. Since there are 13 parts, most of them take on several roles.
Emily Brontë’s novel, adapted for the stage by Jane Thornton and directed here by Lisa Warrington, is a melodramatic tale of desire, cruelty and revenge on the Yorkshire moors. Much hinges on the undying love between Catherine and Heathcliff, but despite Anna Henare’s lithe charm and Timothy Foley’s handsome, dominating presence, this aspect isn’t entirely convincing and the play doesn’t quite ignite.
This seems to be, at least in part, the result of its pace. The convoluted plot of an ample 19th-century novel necessitates a fast clip, and there is not enough opportunity for psychological insight or smouldering passion to develop.
Stephen Kilroy’s eerie, multi-coloured lighting effects, the perpetual sound of a howling wind and a set that seems to be on the verge of toppling, convey the sense of a place at the very edge of the civilised world, and whose inhabitants are just beyond the norms of ordinary society.
Perhaps chosen to attract the audiences who loved last year’s Emma, Wuthering Heights seems more stilted, with a few humorous moments but little warmth.
Still, on the way out I heard an audience member remarking to her companion that she felt inspired to re-read the book, so perhaps some people enjoyed it more than I did.
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments
Make a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Make a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Comments