Wuthering Heights on stage: an ‘emotionally epic’ adaptation
Emma Rice’s touring production is packed with her ‘trademark troubadour quirkiness’

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights – that tale of “turbulent passions and terrible cruelties” set high on the Yorkshire moors – is “commonly read in adolescence, when one’s sensibilities may be particularly susceptible to its intoxicating highs and lows”, said Donald Hutera in The Times.
Theatre director Emma Rice fell for the book as a teenager – and her lifelong passion for it is clear in every scene of this “emotionally epic” adaptation. Lasting nearly three hours, the play (which is due to arrive at the National Theatre in February as part of its long tour) is a real “corker”: inventive, absorbing and brilliantly acted.
Rice’s staging is packed with her “trademark troubadour quirkiness”, said Quentin Letts in The Sunday Times. There are dances, puppets, songs, “ceaseless movement, bohemian feyness”, and a “seemingly mad jumble of props” that actually help clarify the tangled plot.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
In one bold move, Rice has replaced the housekeeper-narrator figure with a kind of “all-singing, all-dancing” Greek chorus embodying the windswept moor, said Georgina Brown in the Daily Mail. Led by Nandi Bhebhe, it howls up hurricanes and helps the audience keep track of the convoluted storylines. It’s a daring concept, thrillingly done – and typical of this “wildly imaginative, exhilarating piece of theatre”.
The cast is strong, with many kept busy in multiple roles, said Claire Allfree in The Daily Telegraph. Lucy McCormick’s “pleasingly yobbish, untameable” Cathy is like a “more unhinged Hedda Gabler”. Ash Hunter makes the “diabolical” Heathcliff “sympathetic” without remotely glamorising him. And Katy
Owen is a “comic force” in roles including Cathy’s love rival Isabella, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Ultimately, I found all the “audacious theatricality” and kookiness to be both “ingenious and faintly ridiculous”, like a “postmodern literary satire” that risks having no real depth. Yet the show does “build its world, albeit a conspicuously artificial one, and hold us in it with an intensity of its own”. It is funny, charming – and “exquisitely” done.
Bristol Old Vic, and touring until May 2022 (wisechildrendigital.com)
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
A tour of Sri Lanka’s beautiful north
The Week Recommends ‘Less frenetic’ than the south, this region is full of beautiful wildlife, historical sites and resorts
-
Giorgio Armani obituary: designer revolutionised the business of fashion
In the Spotlight ‘King Giorgio’ came from humble beginnings to become a titan of the fashion industry and redefine 20th century clothing
-
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale – a ‘comfort’ watch for fans
The Week Recommends The final film of the franchise gives viewers a chance to say goodbye
-
The Paper: new show, same 'warmth and goofiness'
The Week Recommends This spin-off of the American version of The Office is ‘comfortingly and wearyingly familiar’
-
Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons – ‘riotously colourful’ works from an ‘exhilarating’ painter
The Week Recommends The 34-year-old is the first artist to take over Dulwich Picture Gallery’s main space
-
Born With Teeth: ‘mischievously provocative’ play starring Ncuti Gatwa
The Week Recommends ‘Sprightly’ production from Liz Duffy Adams imagines the relationship between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe
-
Art review: Lorna Simpson: Source Notes
Feature Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, through Nov. 2
-
Jessica Francis Kane's 6 favorite books that prove less is more
Feature The author recommends works by Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie-Helene Bertino, and more