Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Emma Rice’s maximalist stage adaptation of WUTHERING HEIGHTS ecstatically channels the heightened emotions of Emily Brontë’s novel

• By drediman
• October 20, 2022
• No Comments

Last night over at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, I attended Wise Children’s theatrical rendition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (the staging is a a co-production with the National Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, and York Theatre Royal, in association with St. Ann’s Warehouse and Berkeley Repertory Theater). The production has been adapted for the stage by Emma Rice, who has had a long history of adapting established material – particularly vintage British films – into visceral theatrical experiences (she’s perhaps best known on this side of the pond for adapting Noël Coward’s 1945 film Brief Encounter, which eventually found its way to Broadway in 2010).

This new maximalist, freewheeling version of the classic novel is drenched with ample movement, music, and heightened emotion, rousing the senses with its cornucopia of excesses (although it’s advertised as a musical, I’d argue the piece registers more like a play with music). Indeed, this Wuthering Heights is drunk on its own playfully irreverent storytelling prowess (calling to mind New York-based Bedlam, theatrical deconstructionists whose stage adaptations of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale are currently playing in repertory not far from St. Ann’s). Although the tone often veers awfully close to complete parody and melodrama, Rice’s adaptation has pure intentions, ultimately ending up in the same intensely romantic emotional frame of mind as Emily Brontë’s classic novel.

With a hefty running of just under three hours, the adaptation is certainly comprehensive and insistent in its desire to both entertain and move audiences. In typical fashion, Rice – who also serves as director – stages her adaptation in her recognizably resourceful and highly physical style, giddily pacing the eventful story as if it were a rocket ship. In the turbulent central roles of Heathcliff and Catherine, Liam Tamne and Lucy McCormick give trenchant, appropriately all-consuming performances around which the rest of the production revolves. The rest of the tireless cast is exceptional; particularly clever is the use of the amorphous ensemble as the physical embodiment of the moors themselves. The collective endeavor ecstatically channels the heightened emotions of Emily Brontë’s novel.

RECOMMENDED

WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Off-Broadway, Musical
Wise Children, et. al. / St. Ann’s Warehouse
2 hours, 50 minutes (with one intermission)
Through November 6