Worthing’s Conn Artists once again confirm themselves as a theatrical force be reckoned with, this time with a deeply-impressive stage adaptation of Jane Eyre, directed by Nick Young and produced by Ross Muir who is also our Rochester.

So assured, so confident, so natural were the performances that it was difficult to believe that this was the very first night of the tour that we were watching.

And equally, at the end, it was difficult to believe that we had seen just five actors, so completely and so distinctly did they inhabit the vast array of roles across the evening.

But perhaps most impressive of all was the fluency of the production, a piece of storytelling which beautifully captured the essence of the novel and flowed undeflected until it had delivered it whole – not just the darkness, the cruelty and the damage, but also the lightness and the humour.

This was a night of traditional Conn Artists work, with all their hallmarks, the use of music, a simple set, highly-effective multi-roling, the adaptation of a great classic – all woven together to excellent effect.

Our Jane tonight was Evie Depledge, and it was a remarkable performance she gave, offering us Jane’s vulnerability but more importantly, the sheer strength of her spirit – the little girl who endures such viciousness and cruelty and yet who answers back so forthrightly, ditto the young woman who learns to love but does so on her own terms, always according to her sense of what is right and just.

Opposite her was company founder and tonight’s producer Ross Muir as Rochester. Muir rightly gave us Rochester as a complex and difficult man, damaged and so wrong in so much of what he does, but also a man who starts to see the light and sense just what his life could be. It’s a very finely judged performance.

And around Depledge and Muir (who multi-roles to an extent), the others create the rest of Jane Eyre’s world.

Janna Fox shifts beautifully from Mrs Reed to Mrs Fairfax to Miss Ingram; Erin Maria Walther breaks your heart as Helen and then delights as Adele; Edward Smith is variously the ghastly Mr Brocklehurst and the high-minded St John Rivers.

Put it all together and it’s a terrific evening at the theatre which is about to go far and wide on a major tour – including that crucial home date in Worthing (Thursday-Friday, October 8-9) (Phil Hewitt)

   

Dread Central and many other sites are sharing the trailer for Wuthering Heights: The House of the Damned.

Here’s a reimagining you didn’t know you needed (or maybe still don’t). Saban Films has released a trailer this morning for Wuthering Heights: The House of the Damned, based on the classic novel by Emily Brontë.

No, really. If you didn’t think Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights earlier this year was enough of its own horror movie, this reimagining has you covered. It turns the “romance” story on its head, transforming it into what looks like a pretty generic ghost story.

Here’s the official synopsis: Mr. Lockwood arrives at the remote and storm battered Wuthering Heights, unaware that Catherine’s vengeful ghost walks its halls. Her obsessed lover, Heathcliff, feeds her blood lust with human sacrifice, hoping to give her soul a new body to inhabit. As Lockwood grows sick and delusional, he is drawn deeper into their deadly, undying love, and must escape before he becomes their next victim.

Ross Townsend-Green, Sky Cheema, Elle O’Hara, and Nicola Wright star.

Rebecca J. Matthews (A Woman Scorned) directed from a script by Liana Failla.

Enter Wuthering Heights: The House of the Damned when the film releases on VOD and Digital October 16th via Saban Films. (Matt Konopka)

And here's the trailer:

 

Collider has ranked 'The 10 Best Books That Are Over 100 Years Old' and Wuthering Heights has made it onto #5.

5 'Wuthering Heights' (1847)

People have been alarmed and challenged by Wuthering Heights for almost 180 years now, and that’s kind of great. Admittedly, the most recent movie adaptation is what caused the most Wuthering Heights-related drama in living memory, but it’s easy to imagine this book causing a stir – and feeling like a shock to the system – when read back in the 1800s. Even throughout much of the 20th century, Wuthering Heights would've felt like a lot. And today… maybe still a bit, to be honest.

It’s easy to be taken off-guard if you're after some kind of sweeping romance, because the book really isn't that. There is passion, and some people who believe they're in love, but also, so many dysfunctional characters defined by traumatic pasts, and much more by way of tragedies that happen than moments of romance or passion. It’s a dark, borderline-horror novel at times, and it’s a bit like Frankenstein in that adaptations can be interesting, or even good, but there is something unable to be captured in a different medium, no matter how skilled the filmmaker might be. You just have to find time to read Emily Brontë’s original story the way you need to find time to, one day, read the entirety of Frankenstein’s original text. (Jeremy Urquhart)

   

The little OPERA theatre of ny (LOTNY) will present Wuthering Heights, an opera by Carlisle Floyd after the novel by Emily Brontë, from November 19-22 at the Loreto Theater, Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, 18 Bleecker St, New York, NY, 10012. [...]

Wuthering Heights, an opera by Carlisle Floyd after the novel by Emily Brontë, is the iconic story of Cathy and Heathcliff, whose bond in childhood grows into an unbreakable love, set against the raw landscape of the Yorkshire Moors. Their attempt to reform their interior nature and conform to society's expectations of them ends in tragedy for them and the people around them.

American composer Carlisle Floyd's setting of the story has not been seen in NYC since its premiere in 1959, when it was presented by the New York City Opera. (Stephi Wild)