GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
‘A story not of romance but of brutality, cruelty and revenge’
JAN WOOLF recommends a play which is a marvel of ensemble playing, where actors and on-stage musicians are in high-energy harmony
TERRIFIC ACTING: Sam Archer as Edgar Linton, Ash Hunter as Heathcliff and Lucy McCormick as Cathy
[Steve Tanner]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
Wuthering Heights
National Theatre
CHARLOTTE BRONTE said of her sister Emily’s book “Wuthering Heights is rustic all through. It is moorish, wild, and knotty as a root of heath.” And so are the family dynamics.
This enduring classic has been adapted for movies, TV series, put to song by Kate Bush and satire by Monty Python, with soulmates Cathy and Heathcliff communicating with semaphore flags across the moor.
It’s been a set book on the English National Curriculum and the subject of many essays, my favourite by Andrea Dworkin claiming that the whole thing represents “bad emotional health.” And so it does.
Similar stories
JAN WOLF enjoys a British revival of the 1972 come of age farce/panto Pippin
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
JAN WOOLF is beguiled by the tempting notion that Freud psychoanalysed Hitler in a comedy that explores the vulnerability of a damaged individual