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.
Subscribe to 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
-
How China uses 'dark fleets' to circumvent trade sanctions
The Explainer The fleets are used to smuggle goods like oil and fish
-
Cracks appear in MAGA's pro-Israel front
IN THE SPOTLIGHT As the world watches a humanitarian crisis unfold across Gaza, some of Israel's most staunchly conservative defenders have begun speaking out against its actions in the occupied territories
-
5 cultural trails to traverse by car
The Week Recommends Leave the hiking shoes at home
-
Gazer: 'paranoid noir chiller' is a gripping watch
The Week Recommends Ryan J. Sloan's debut film is haunted with 'skin-crawling unease'
-
William Kentridge: The Pull of Gravity – a 'bold' exhibition
The Week Recommends The South African artist brings his distinctive works to Yorkshire Sculpture Park
-
Sarah Dunant shares her favourite books
The Week Recommends The British novelist picks works by Sergeanne Golon, Jill Burke and Natalie Zemon
-
Inter Alia: Rosamund Pike is 'electric' in gut-wrenching legal drama
The Week Recommends Australian playwright Suzie Miller is back with a follow up to her critically-acclaimed hit play Prima Facie
-
Unforgivable: harrowing drama about abuse and rehabilitation
The Week Recommends 'Catastrophic impact' of abuse is explored in 'thought-provoking' series
-
The Bad Guys 2: 'kids will lap up' crime caper sequel starring Sam Rockwell and Awkwafina
The Week Recommends 'Wittier and more energetic', this film 'wipes the floor' with the original
-
I Am Giorgia: 'self-serving' yet 'amazing story' of Italy's first female prime minister
The Week Recommends Giorgia Meloni, once a 'short, fat, sullen, bullied girl', explains how she became one of the most powerful people in politics
-
The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869–1939
Feature Wrightwood 659, Chicago, through Aug. 2