Holding a whip in one hand and a wind-bent tree in the other, the barefoot girl makes a provocative entrance while whining like a malevolent sprite. This is the wild Katherine Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights, and it’s a threat, even if her threat is faintly ridiculous.
Making a first impression that extracts the essence of a character is a rare art, and one of many things that a company with quick wits and agile bodies excels at. smart kids‘s mysterious “Wuthering Heights” does very well. British director Emma Rice’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 19th-century novel, this music-filled version is an embrace and an envelopment. A feat of storytelling that envelops the audience and draws us into its silliness and sadness.
As Catherine and her tormented Heathcliff once were, surrounded by gale-blown Yorkshire moors, the landscape becomes a playground for the imagination, pausing every now and then to be friendly and joking. In a way, we will follow. As one bewildered stranger puts it, “everyone is related and all names sound the same” when stumbled upon this multifamily, multigenerational tale.
Well, yes, but this is a show devoted to clarity, where each new death (and, good thing, these people die at an alarming rate). It’s also our clue that the next time we see a deceased actor for a character, that cast member is likely playing someone else, possibly the child of a dead person.
Also, the wilderness of this work St. Anne’s Warehousewhich was staged at the National Theater in London last winter, It’s not just where Vicki Mortimer’s rough wooden sets suggest mostly with the low gray clouds that pass over the screen on stage. It is embodied by a chorus that dances and has opinions. On some of the important background-providing functions that old retainer Ellen has in the novel.
Anyway, you don’t have to brush up on your Bronte. fine.
At the center of it all are Catherine and Heathcliff. His two halves of the same soul, Katherine and Heathcliff, are just bastards when his father finds little orphaned Heathcliff on the docks of Liverpool and takes him home to join the Wuthering Heights family. . Catherine’s brother, Hindley, takes an immediate dislike to the newcomer and treats him viciously, feeling that his birthright is threatened by the presence of this darker-skinned boy. increase.
“Gypsy,” Hindley calls Heathcliff and hits him whenever he gets the chance.
For Catherine, Heathcliff is both a best friend and a mischievous partner. Their youngest selves are first played by puppets, then seamlessly taken over by adult actors Lucy McCormick and Liam Tam, who bring intense chemistry to what would become Catherine and Heathcliff’s hopeless mutual obsession. However, when they were playing about the field in the beginning, the joy they shared with each other and the freedom they felt together form a bond so unbreakable that it transcends death.
Like other Wuthering Heights residents and neighboring estate Thrushcross Grange, it’s home to the laughably timid Linton brothers, Edgar (Sam Archer) and Isabella (Katie Owen, the show’s brilliant comic powerhouses). Catherine and Heathcliff are shaped and transformed by their environment. , where it’s easy to be lonely, hold grudges, and take revenge.
As brutish as Catherine is in general, and her eventual betrayal of Heathcliff as monstrous, to begin as a boy and wield great violence against each other, both physically and mentally, to perpetuate it. Of course, Heathcliff is the prime example of that, from an innocent child to all the pretty evils that have ever been done to him (much of it based on race and class). to justify his long game of retribution.
Still, Rice is a longtime St. Anne favorite with productions like ‘Brief Encounter’ and ‘Tristan and Yersult’, confirming that this enchanting ‘Wuthering Heights’ is not a carnival of darkness. Owen in particular is a source of gaiety, not only as Isabella but also as her lavishly spoiled son, Little Linton. Fetean) is also a fragile fool in bad taste to marry.
Hindley has kindness only to Frances, and when she dies he falls to pieces. But just as Fethean is as cruel and drunk as Hindley, he is the son of Hindley, Hareton, who was beaten by both his father and Heathcliff but chose not to emulate them. as gentle as By targeting his own victims. It is a work that combines the agility and gentleness of this work with a brilliant performance.
Stalked by Katherine’s roaming ghost, infused with live music from Ian Ross, and somewhere that feels like earth and air, this is a show with a brilliantly untamed spirit. destination is better, deeper and sexier than the superior version we saw in London earlier this year.
At about 3 hours including breaks, it demands an absolutely worthwhile investment of time. For one thing, I want to go back.
Wuthering Heights
Until November 6th at St. Anne’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. stanswarehouse.orgRunning time: 2 hours 50 minutes.