Wuthering Heights

The Northern Ballet Theatre makes a welcome return to Edinburgh with this adaptation of Emily Brontë’s literary classic Wuthering Heights. With the company in full bloom, having just won the Patron’s Award at the Critics' Circle National Dance Awards, this much-publicised collaboration between the media of text, music and dance has been touted as an exciting new venture, particularly for the novel’s enthusiasts.

Adored by scholars and romantics alike, Wuthering Heights depicts the violent, bittersweet and passionate love story between Cathy and Heathcliff. Two volatile souls, their destructive relationship becomes their ruin; from the innocence of their childhood introduction to the desolation of their final encounter, the partnership is fraught with tension throughout. The Northern Ballet production has been adapted using the framing narrative techniques of prologue and epilogue; as the grown-up Heathcliff and Cathy perform alongside their younger, more playful counterparts, the thematic contrast between childhood and adulthood is evoked. From the outset, the production is given an air of sentimentality, one that it never quite manages to shake off.

In part, the problem stems from the choreography. Its elegance is a contradiction to the novel’s ingrained savagery; the only time we feel any sense of unruliness is when the children are at play—but of course, as a ballet, every tumble and fall is naturally punctuated by a delicate pirouette. Unlike Matthew Bourne’s Dorian Gray, which managed to incorporate stylised ballet in a way that successfully represented primitive sexuality, the movements here are too fluid to do the same. Kenneth Tindall makes for a typically windblown Heathcliff; his dance routines, aided by excellent orchestration, for the most part convey his drive. His relations with Cathy, however, are not as raw or painful as those in the novel: there is a considerable amount of dreamy frolicking on the moors and not enough furious angst.

The attractive costumes and gentle dancing assist in this rejection of the book's violent nature, and only at the end does tragedy finally prevail. As a production, it might not offer fans of the novel an outright adaptation, but its accessibility will no contribute to an exciting discovery for Brontë newcomers.