PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights
Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith

Hailed as one of the greatest love stories of all time, reproducing Emily Brontë’s classic novel for the stage is perhaps a tall order from the outset. Here British-Asian theatre company, Tamasha, rise to the challenge of bringing Brontë to Bollywood.

This isn’t the first time that Brontë’s work has been relocated into a different cultural context and it certainly won’t be the last. We see here the Yorkshire moors transformed into the Rajasthan desert, Cathy becomes Shakuntala, a spice merchant’s daughter, and Heathcliff appears under the guise of street urchin Krishan. The story itself is an abridged and modified take on the novel: a beggar man, who we later discover is the elderly Krishan, recounts his tale of unrequited love to a young boy he encounters on the streets of Bombay.

Although in its entirety the story would make a long stage production, we are shown here that shortening or ‘fast-forwarding’ it in turn erroneously deprives the production of the novel’s very essence ─the combination of the couple’s bittersweet passion and Heathcliff’s brooding resentment. It is clear that Shakuntala and Krishan are miserable without each other and resent one another for this misery. However, what Tamasha’s production definitively lacks is the magnitude of the visceral bitterness inherent in Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship, which plagues them and their descendants until they are ultimately reconciled in death.

Nonetheless, Kristine Landon-Smith's production has a lot of merits. The cast put on strong performances, particularly in the case of Youkti Patel as Shakuntala and Rina Fatania as Ayah. The whole thing is comical, vibrant and thoroughly enjoyable. Yet even though local references and smatterings of Hindi dialogue don't detract from the performance itself, you do have the occasional sense that some of the audience are in on a secret that you are not.

Although Tamasha has succeeded in bringing an interesting concept and a challenging undertaking to the stage, ─and I never thought I would say this of a Bollywood production ─ I think the passion could have been more over-the-top, more overstated, more…Bollyfied. The production renders more of a soap opera than a passionate love story and should reflect more of Brontë’s drama, which is itself, in a sense, histrionic. Remember that this limitless passion is powerful enough to transcend generations and indeed lifetimes. This production could have done with bringing out more of the melodrama that is so intrinsic to traditional Bollywood theatre and done the novel the justice it truly deserves.

Ruth Collins