Lucinka Eisler’s postmodern Inspector Sands production of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights at the Oxford Playhouse from Tuesday, May 9 – Saturday13
Review by JON LEWIS

Lucinka Eisler’s postmodern Inspector Sands production of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights, adapted by Ben Lewis, begins with the feisty heroine Cathy (Lua Bairstow) uttering the word ‘monster’, an appellation repeated seconds later by Cathy’s spinster housekeeper Nelly (Giulia Innocenti). It is 1801, towards the end of a story that begins over a quarter of a century earlier. Nelly is the narrator whose subjective interpretation is constantly challenged and refocused by the novel’s other characters with comments into hand-held microphones that are often acidic, ironic, irritable and exasperated. These disembodied voices are reminiscent of the scary caller in the Scream movies, seemingly one step ahead of their victim.

The Gothic horror elements of the narrative are heightened by these disembodied voices, spirits that haunt Nelly as she attempts to hold together two dysfunctional households. The play text initially quotes Nelly describing Heathcliff (Ike Bennett) as a ghoul and a vampire although in Eisler and Lewis’s version, his monstrous intentions lie in his ability to become a controlling figure motivated by acquiring through inheritance Wuthering Heights and the larger Thrushcross Grange. However, Nelly and Catherine’s fear of Heathcliff may also reflect their insular white privilege being subjugated by a homeless orphaned black immigrant from the port city of Liverpool made good.

The back wall of the set features a family tree on which photographs of the novel’s characters are pinned, somewhat like a police incident board. Each time a character dies, their photo is removed from the wall until only two images remain. Both families are infused with weak characters prone to illness and early death, and more inarticulate, earthy figures whose cruelty hides a desire to be loved. The drama becomes a Darwinian fight for survival among the windswept Yorkshire hills with no sentimentality shown to characters who fall by the wayside.

The inescapable truth is that society needs the changeling qualities that Heathcliff brings to Wuthering Heights. The pathetic, reactive characters of Earnshaw, Edgar and Linton (Leander Deeny) who sprawl in their armchairs, have no place in a changing world. It is a bleak vision with limited optimism.