Shake & Stir's Wuthering Heights review
There is a popular idea that for a story to be successful, the characters need to be likable – or, at least, one of them. Wuthering Heights is the exception. There is no character that won’t draw your frustration at some point, or make you want to send them all the way back to the eighteenth century. Wuthering Heights is just like a horror story that you somehow can’t bear to look away from.
Australian contemporary theatre company Shake & Stir have brought Emily Bronte’s gothic novel Wuthering Heights to life on stage in a national tour which began at Canberra Theatre Playhouse.
If you haven’t read the book, the production is an artistic work in its own right. The dialogue is modernised, the accents Australian-ised and some characters omitted, but the morbid and melodramatic plot remains.
The sophisticated set is successful in portraying the sullen mood and switches effortlessly between settings. But what makes the production so engaging is that the stage quite literally wears the mess of the extreme emotions expressed throughout. Long drapes float across the stage; feather pillows are ripped apart; smoke and light creates the mist on the moors and water falls from the roof.
Ross Balbuziente takes on the role of Heathcliff with a brilliant apish flair and leads his character from moody child to merciless adult. The plot boils down to one climactic and astonishing monologue made by Balbuziente and the audience finally sees Heathcliff as a human, not a monster.
Although the storyline is riddled with melodrama, the frustration at the ridiculousness is entertaining in itself.
A source of most of the blood-curdling frustration and such entertainment is Gemma Welling as Catherine Earnshaw. She is appropriately brattish and dramatic to the point that you almost wish her fate upon her.
Adaptor, director and actor Nick Skubij does a great job at attempting to out-monster Heathcliff as Catherine’s brother Hindley, and Tim Dashwood and Nelle Lee portray the unlucky brother and sister who are caught in the Heathcliff-Catherine vortex with comical grace.
Particular mention should go to Nelle Lee for doubling as Isabella and Heathcliff’s sickly and fragile son Linton.
But the standout of the show was undoubtedly Linden Wilkinson in the thankless but critical role of servant, nanny and narrator Nelly Dean.
Overall Shake & Stir’s Wuthering Heights was a polished must-see for all fans and newcomers alike. I left the theatre thinking that this was an excellent adaptation of the book – with the stipulation that it is still an adaptation and not the original.
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