Theatre Review: Wuthering Heights at The Rondo Theatre, Bath

This review was first written for The Public Reviews

More than 150 years after it was first published, Wuthering Heights needs very little introduction. The only novel written by Emily Brontë, it tells of the destructive passion of Cathy and Heathcliff, brought up together in the Earnshaw household but driven apart by divisions of class and status and the elemental forces of life and death.

This adaptation from Butterfly Psyche and Livewire Theatre strips the action back to just two actors; Alison Campbell and Jeremy Fowlds not only take the parts of Cathy and Heathcliff but play all the other characters as well. The play opens as Mr Lockwood, a tenant of Heathcliff’s at Thrushcross Grange, visits his landlord at his remote moorland farmhouse, Wuthering Heights. Compelled by bad weather to stay the night, he finds himself haunted by a nightmare of Cathy’s ghost at the bedroom window.

Back at the Grange, his housekeeper Nelly Dean tells him the story of Heathcliff and Cathy’s doomed and vengeful love and its wider repercussions for the next generation. Dougie Blaxland’s adaptation pares back some of Emily Brontë’s minor characters while still keeping the full sense of her complex plotlines – embracing the comedy of the squabbling Linton children as well as Heathcliff and Cathy’s greater tragedy.

Under Ian McGlynn’s direction, in the intimate setting of The Rondo, the two-handed approach works well, with generally clear transitions between characters and scenes linked by Lockwood and Nelly’s narration. When one of the actors plays two characters at once, the conversation is portrayed by their leaping back and forth between two sides of the stage; Fowlds faces greater demands in the number of rapid switches he has to make and just once or twice the roles of Heathcliff and Cathy’s brother Hindley become blurred.

Lighting and sound are understated, although particularly appropriate is Donna Summer’s I Feel Love playing before the beginning of the production. The set is minimal and Campbell’s simple full-length Victorian dress and Fowlds’ white shirt and dark coat serve to represent all their incarnations. Although it is not possible to mine the depths of each character in this way – showing the full extent of Cathy’s tempestuous wilfulness for example or Heathcliff’s brooding malevolence  – what we do get by a change of voice and mannerisms is a good representation of each and a pacey unfolding of the story.

This appealing adaptation of Wuthering Heights is part of Butterfly Psyche and Livewire Theatre’s acclaimed Brontë season which includes a one-woman Jane Eyre (also starring Alison Campbell) and another two-hander in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In today’s often risk-averse arts climate, it’s refreshing to see this collaboration unafraid to take on such an ambitious programme and tackle it so effectively.

Reviewed on 14^th March 2015.

Theatre Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall at The Rondo Theatre, Bath

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the Brontë novel you discover, rather than it being force-fed to you at school. Written by the lesser known sister Anne, it's tonally distinctive, taking a more brutal view of humanity than the romanticised stories of Charlotte and Emily.

At the time of publication in 1848 (under the name Acton Bell), the actions of its heroine in leaving her abusive and alcoholic husband outraged Victorian society, but also led to phenomenal success on both sides of the Atlantic. Co-inciding with the first women's rights convention taking place in Seneca Falls, New York, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is widely considered to be the first fully sustained feminist novel.

This new stage production of the book is a result of collaboration between Butterfly Psyche and Livewire Theatre, part of their Brontë Season, alongside Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.  All of these are pared back adaptations and in Tenant, directed by Shane Morgan, the story is told by just two actors, Madelaine Ryan and Tom Turner.

Helen Graham, a mysterious young widow, has taken up residence at the dilapidated Wildfell Hall. She quickly becomes the subject of village gossip but Gilbert Markham, a local young farmer, refuses to believe the worst. As he admires the canvases she paints to keep herself and her young son, their friendship develops. Desperate to explain her situation, Helen gives him her diaries and Gilbert reads of her marriage to Arthur Huntingdon and the abuse which lead her to leave him. Agonised by her situation, he also realises how far apart they are in terms of class. Then, as Helen receives news of her husband's ill-health, it seems she must leave Wildfell Hall and return to Arthur's side.

That the actors are not dressed in Victorian costume reinforces the contemporary relevance of the issues of alcoholism and domestic abuse raised by this story; having said this, Alison Farina's adaptation finds an unexpectedly comic lightness of touch. Inhabiting multiple characters, but primarily those of Helen and Gilbert, Ryan and Turner are an appealingly well-matched duo. There's believable chemistry between them; when roguish Huntingdon proposes to naive young Helen, she leaps into his arms and the couple fend off the admonitions of her aunt. It's a captivating moment and the physicality shown in this instant could have been further extended in the rest of the play.

There are few props, just a couple of suitcases and some empty canvases, and a musical score by Wasuremono of Bradford-on-Avon. Pared back it may be, but it's an entertaining and entirely charming production, whether or not you already know the story.


The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is part of the Brontë Season at the Rondo, Bath until 27th September 2014. 
Pictures courtesy of Butterfly Psyche Theatre.