Ash Hunter and Lucy McCormick in Wuthering Heights
(Picture: Steve Tanner)Emma Rice brings all the weapons in her theatrical armoury to this exuberant adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel, apart from brevity. The doomed moorland romance of Catherine Earnshaw and her foundling soulmate Heathcliff, which almost totally destroys their families, unfolds in a storytelling session involving dance, song, physical comedy, clever props and back projection.
The inventiveness of Rice’s show - co-produced with her company Wise Children, Bristol Old Vic and York Theatre Royal - palls somewhat the umpteenth time the ensemble wafts across the stage chanting, though, or Ash Hunter’s powerfully saturnine Heathcliff stomps to the footlights to yet again glower at the audience. A pity, because this is otherwise the most purely joyful production we’ve seen at the National in ages.
