Welcome to the wild and windy moors. Emma Rice’s unwieldy production of Wuthering Heights, newly transferred to the National Theatre from Bristol Old Vic, bursts through the door, blustering and boisterous (and complete with some ropey Yorkshire accents).
It’s a tricky text to adapt: Emily Brontë’s gothic classic has a plot as twisty as a gorse bush, with a number of convoluted family trees for an audience to get their heads around (indeed, Rice makes a point of having the chorus discuss just how confusing it all is). Still, Rice does a fairly remarkable job in making the text as lucid as it is, even if depth of character is sacrificed for breadth of narrative. The majority of the runtime is taken up with Cathy and Heathcliff’s doomed romance: as Cathy, Lucy McCormick, best known for her bonkers performance art, has that requisite wildness in her eyes. Her long blonde hair is matted, she stalks the stage like a vengeful ghost, and she snarls and yowls through a rock solo that lets her virtuosic voice rip through the Lyttelton. Ash Hunter as Heathcliff plays it more straight: Rice seeks to emphasise the way in which Heathcliff is othered by the whiteness of the society around him, and Hunter plays the anti-hero first with fiery rage, and eventually steely cruelty. The pair don’t quite make this strange, turbulent relationship sing, though; their love for one another – the kind of love that defies all logic and reason – is never fully convincing. It’s a shame, too, that McCormick, a performer who has the unique ability to feel properly dangerous and unpredictable onstage, is a little constrained here. Rice sends her into the auditorium at one point, but frustratingly (perhaps due to Covid protocol) has her meekly return to the stage before she can wreak havoc.
