Mix of Wuthering Heights and lows

10 April 2012

Barely a week after Tamasha’s Bollywood song and dance version of Wuthering Heights finished at the Lyric Hammersmith, along comes a dance adaptation of Emily Brontë’s gothic tale of wind and misery at the Linbury. It’s by Cathy Marston, the dancer-turned-choreographer who trained at the Royal Ballet before becoming director of Bern Ballet.

Marston focuses on the first half of Brontë’s book, deftly conveying the central relationship between Cathy (Jenny Tattersall) and Heathcliff (Gary Marshall) in a series of powerful duets.

There are also unnerving sequences for Cathy and her brother Hindley, Cathy and her husband-to-be Edgar, and for Heathcliff and Edgar’s sister Isabella, all of which remind you that thwarted emotions have negative externalities.

This 70-minute Heights is not without problems. As well as the five main characters, Marston uses another seven dancers to amplify Cathy and Heathcliff’s emotions. This is gilding the gilding, as the unhappy pair hardly need help expressing themselves. The result is an emotional pitch set at high and a diminution of your sympathy.

Another niggle is the costumes, which are similar beige dresses for the women and beige trews for the men so it’s tricky telling one character from the next. There’s also choreographic drift and the perennial problem of taking Heights seriously when its hero, whose name includes the words heath and cliff, wanders emotionally around and jumps passionately off.

Much better is the almost non-existent set (a clever piece of counter-design), and Dave Maric’s jagged score which provides both meteorological mood and emotional daggers.

Bern:Ballett: Wuthering Heights
Linbury Studio Theatre At Royal Opera House
Bow Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 9DD

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