I’m a die-hard Brontë fan, and I approached this new interpretation by Tamasha as a curiosity (rather than instantly damning it as a travesty as I know some might), and that’s pretty much what it is. An adaptation of the Cathy and Heathcliff part of the story filtered through the conventions of Bollywood filmmaking, that owes more to the Laurence Olivier movie (it has the movie’s ending, in which Cathy dies of a broken heart and then it’s all over) than it does to Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights is a bit like a car crash- you just can’t look away and Cathy and Heathcliff have to be the most miserable protagonists in literature (it’s Olivier who turned Heathcliff into a romantic hero), so I was a bit bemused as to how the Bollywood conventions of lots of colour, music and dance would work. One of my favourite guilty pleasures is Gurinder Chadha’s Bollywood-fied Pride and Prejudice (not least because my dream man Naveen Andrews plays the Indian Mr Bingley), which is really cleverly done and shows so much warmth and affection for the original. This doesn’t reach the same heights (no pun intended- perhaps it’s also unfair to make comparisons as Austen and the Brontës are so different), but it works well enough for what it is. My friend was appalled by the lack of the second generation (little Cathy, Hareton and Linton), but it didn’t come as a shock to me. By the time we got to the interval, I knew there wouldn’t be time. It means that we don’t get to see Heathcliff at his most despicable, meaning that he remains a misunderstood romantic hero. Somehow, it bothers me a lot less than the way that the supposedly faithful 2006 adaptation of Jane Eyre completely glossed over Charlotte’s scathing critique of child abuse at Lowood, assuming that all people are interested in is the Jane/Rochester relationship.
One of the main problems is the lip synching- I know that’s traditional in all Bollywood films, but this is live theatre, not a film, and so the musical numbers all feel a bit stilted and artificial. As for the music, I wasn’t expecting a Sondheim score- all the numbers sound similar and there are cheesy rhymes galore. The themes of class, destiny and spirituality all translate well to the setting of nineteenth-century India, it’s just a shame that Cathy’s “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff” speech was rather rushed through. The framing device is also rather hoky, with an old man telling the story to a young urchin (it would have been better to have had Nelly/Ayah doing that), who at the end reveals himself to be Heathcliff, who’s been carrying Cathy’s ashes around for twenty years and then turns back into the young Heathcliff and is rewarded with a schmaltzy reunion with Cathy. If you say so.
A flawed, but entertaining enough afternoon in what was perhaps the emptiest auditorium I’ve ever been in. Is Emily spinning in her grave, or would she be pleased that her novel, so misunderstood at the time, is still inspiring so many different interpretations? I wouldn’t dare make any assumptions.
(This review refers to a performance that took place on June 10th 2009)
