Wuthering Heights as a walking play through Lisle's Morton Arboretum:

Inkwell Arts and Learning  present

Wuthering Heights

by Alissa Frewen

Director: Lara Filip

Original Music by Willa Zatzenboom 
With Sylar Mcclure, Faiz Siddique, Margaret Rogers, Bradley Lauber, Ryan Adams, Grace Burman, Gwenny Hayes, Jojo Nagwangu, Austin Hartung, Zola Pineda, Alexander Wisniewski, Olivia Sulisz.

October 17 (low impact walking play), October 18, 24, 25 at 16.00h

Wuthering Heights has been on our shortlist of books to adapt for a long time. However, it felt a little too obscure, maybe a little too complex a story to tackle. There really hadn’tbeen a truly faithful adaptation of it...well...ever. 

Then, a new, splashy campaign of ads came out for the new 2026 movie version! How exciting! Maybe there will be a new, faithful retelling of Bronte’s story! Or... Maybe not.

To be clear...I think it’s a beautiful film, and the creator was very clear that this was a teenage, fever-dream, re-imagined adaptation. I appreciated the creativity and beauty of it, but it left me even more eager to begin rehearsals for our production, so we could dig into the text and themes of the book as it was originally intended. 

At its heart, Wuthering Heights is not a story of lust, or violence or even longing...although there are plenty of those thematic moments. For me, it asks a question of whether (wuther?) or not, we can rise above generational trauma to find redemption and the love we all deserve.

It also is a story rooted fully in the period, but also incredibly universal in its exploration of the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. The disruption to the social and class systems and the pushback against the gentry of the time feel chillingly relevant, if you think about it. There was a sort of collapse of the “Real Wives of the Aristocracy” versus the “New Money” kids, coming up in the world and pushing the boundaries that had held society together up to that point. 

There’s also an even simpler truth. We should tell people we love them. Straight up. Just tell them. Maybe be honest about your hopes and fears and discuss the obstacles to your happiness with the people who can help change your destiny. Also, maybe just go ahead and change your destiny yourself anddon’t make rash decisions...(CATHY!!)

But, ALSO, maybe Cathy needed help shedidn’t know how to ask for. Mental health becomes a sort of shadowy, extra character in the story. Ghosts feel very real when we feel the pain Heathcliff carries from the moment he is “adopted” into this family. Nelly certainly has some narcissistic tendencies, ifwe’re being honest. 

Ultimately, this story and the moors themselves give us space to ask ourselves how we might give ourselves a real chance at loveand truth. 

Without hope, no story is worth telling for me...and though we have to traverse a brutal path, it does shine through in the end. I think that journey is well worth that destination. And I believe Alyssa has finally given the world a beautiful, faithful retelling of this tale.I hope you love it as much as we’ve learned to.

   

A brooding Brontë is just the thing for an autumn evening, and this latest revival of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre hits the spot with its atmospheric staging. It’s suitably gothic, for sure, but with a modern update. The minimalist set is nothing more than a stack of black bleachers with large speakers on the steps. [...]

Here, it’s all done in a highly stylised way. The actors play several characters: we see them as young pupils, clergymen, teachers and servants. At one point, they brilliantly march in unison under dramatic monochrome lighting.

The stage changes little – there are the bleachers and then the attic, with the set rotated by the actors. But the way these elements are used is incredible – there’s a striking scene featuring Jane’s bridal veil flowing down the stairs. At one point, the stairs are alight. The speakers glow to reflect the mood, with Jane’s inner monologue projected through them.

Olivia Marcus plays Jane Eyre as a down-to-earth Yorkshire woman, all too aware of her plainness. Gabriel Akuwudike makes a commanding Edward Rochester, while Robyn Rose-Li, as Bertha, is mesmerising to watch as she sings, cries and laughs manically in the attic. However, this Victorian portrayal of mental illness is uncomfortable through a modern lens.

The first 20 minutes of the show feel rather long – Jane’s miserable life on repeat could have been condensed. But then the pace really picks up. The staging is incredible, and the music works well. At a couple of points, I couldn’t quite hear the dialogue, but it’s a minor point.

It’s certainly the year for a Brontë revival, with Emily’s Wuthering Heights taking the box office by storm. Now it’s Charlotte’s turn, with two major theatrical productions of Jane Eyre running. This version makes a compelling case for revisiting the classics, pairing gothic gloom and dark secrets with bold, inventive theatre.

Lily Dyble’s production of Jane Eyre at the Rose Theatre, Kingston neatly avoids all the potential pitfalls of adapting a classic for the stage that many people will have read at school for English Literature GCSE. It doesn’t distract the audience from the heart of the story with lots of period detail and lavish stage effects, nor does it treat the book like a Ming vase – something precious that needs huge caution in the handling, if it is to be done right and avoid disappointing lovers of the original novel. Nor does it go in for all-out subversion and hold the text accountable for attitudes that we now find questionable, thereby spoiling what made it enjoyable in the first place. 

Dyble fully trusts the text but never takes it as read. She treats Charlotte Brontë’s novel with love and respect, but not reverence. The direction and design have a modern, contemporary look – Khadija Raza’s original and effective costumes are very definitely not 19th-century, but there is absolutely no suggestion that it is set in the present. Above all, this adaptation maintains the spark of the original, very much assisted by the strong chemistry between Olivia Marcus’s Jane and Gabriel Akuwudike’s Rochester. 

This production is based on an adaptation by Sally Cookson, Mike Akers, and The Original Company that was first performed at National Theatre in 2015. It retains much of Charlotte Brontë’s original text at its most powerful but is far from slavish in its treatment. There is a huge amount of plot to get through, and it is impressive that this treatment never feels rushed or superficial. 

Anna Yates’ set looks stark and simple. The stage is almost completely filled with a black staircase, containing 10 huge hi-fi speakers that glow with their own light in the darkness and can be moved about to suggest different locations. Any cynical thoughts that this was done purely to provide a cheap, adaptable, but always highly effective set are displaced by some surprises in Act Two  (no spoilers here). At moments of crisis, different acoustically adapted voices interrupt one another to depict the overwhelming nature of Jane’s emotions. Composer and Sound Designer Joseff Harris does much to enhance the mood without providing distraction. The doubling of many roles (in some cases tripling) is very appropriate, as the audience is made to see that the memories of her oppressors are very much still alive in Jane’s head. 

This production gives full weight to the high degree of bullying that Jane experiences, both from her aunt and her family, and then at the ghastly Lowood School, a receiving house for unwanted girls, designed to humiliate and terrorise them into submission but also to train them to be governess fodder (as happened to the three Bronte sisters). The stark power imbalance faced by 19th-century women, especially those with no money of their own, is vividly conveyed, with the pupils reminiscent of the unfortunate women in The Handmaid’s Tale. Remarkably, Jane never sees herself as a victim and doesn’t indulge in feisty defiance for the sake of it. When she takes a stand, it is always on a matter of principle, and she remains rock solid in her determination. Olivia Marcus plays the part with a blunt Yorkshire accent, which is unexpected but absolutely right. [...]

The attraction between Olivia Marcus’s Jane and Gabriel Akuwudike’s Rochester is subtly but effectively conveyed. Akuwudike’s Rochester is surprisingly young for someone wounded by a disastrous first marriage. There is a glib and charming shiftiness – but with significant vulnerability underneath - that helpfully makes him less of the cliched brooding romantic hero. Kate Kordel doubles effectively as the bullying Aunt Reed and the kindly Mrs Fairfax. The production gives proper attention to the first Mrs Rochester, vividly played by Robyn Rose-Li, and makes the most of the many resemblances between Brontë’s novel and that other Great Romantic Classic, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. 

The question of how to stage a story as classic as Jane Eyre is always open to debate, whether you are faithful to the original or offer something new and contemporary. While this production is perhaps far less radical than it might have initially seemed on the surface, it is still a nuanced and effective rendition of the classic story. (Patrick Shorrock)

Olivia Marcus' (Bad Education, These Demons and The Mirror and the Light) portrayal of Jane is wonderfully spot on and a far cry from the comedy acting she presented in Bad Education.

And the London-born actor's Yorkshire accent was almost perfect and super fitting for a plot set in West Yorkshire.

Marcus should be incredibly proud of hearself in being at the heart of the production and producing a believable portrayal of Jane from childhood (she is only 10 at the start) to becoming a woman.

And her depiction of the infamous romance between Jane and Rochester, played by Gabriel Akuwudike (Hamnet and Shetland 10), has the audience both on the edge of their seats in that typical 'will they, won't they ' manner, and swooning when the pair eventually make out.

The chemistry between Marcus and the characters is electric and a wonderful depiction of the old-school love story.

On that note, Akuwudike plays Rochester excellently, doing a brilliant job of portraying the traditional stoic and mysterious yet oddly charming male love interest that often appears in similar love stories. [...]

However, I must say that Andrea Gatchalian, who plays Helen and Adele in Dyble's production, stole the show for me.

Beginning the production as Helen before swapping to Rochester's French ward Adèle, I was amazed at Catchalian's ability to make her child characters believable and to mimic the Scottish and French accents that her characters adopt, so perfectly.

While her portrayal of Helen almost brought me to tears, the actor's depiction of Adèle was a firm favourite of mine, with her ability to make the audience laugh in a play that explores the power imbalance between men and women of the 19th century and themes of mental health.

Another showstopper for me is Robyn Rose-Li, who plays Bertha. Despite having one scene, her dramatic yet heartbreaking monologue depicts Bertha's mental health struggles so authentically that it is almost scary. [...]

Dyble's production as a whole is incredible as it intertwines moments of heartache and fear and religious undertones with laughter, friendship, love and musical elements, which to my surprise had me bobbing my shoulders up and down rhythmically, while also exploring themes of mental health and romance as well as following Brontë's feminist plot.

It all begins in February, when Emerald Fennell, whose millennial sensibilities have a unique resonance with the digitally native, released Wuthering Heights. The flashy Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi-fronted film heaved its bosom to more than $240 million at the global box office, along with a rare prize: mainstream popularity. It further proved its cultural credo by becoming a flashpoint on Reddit and Letterboxd, where one review noted: “It's an adaptation that feels like a 14-year-old skimmed the book and jumped to her own conclusions without any true understanding of the novel.” [...]

It’s not, necessarily, that the story is fanfiction—though that genre has been part of the Austen and Brontë universes for decades (see the Jane Eyre rewrite The Green Glass Sea [can they mean Wide Sargasso Sea?!] and the Pride & Prejudice inspired Bridget Jones’ Diary). [...]

Plus, a whole slew of books. For the Brontës, there’s This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, a Life; Charlotte Brontë’s Life in Clothes, and The Invention of Charlotte Brontë. [...]

For the un-indoctrinated, the contrast between the writers—the Regency-era Jane Austen, author of six books, and the Victorian Brontë sisters, who published six novels between them—has deep roots. Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre, once described Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as: “An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face.” She concluded, “I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses.”

The two writers never met. Austen died in 1817, the year after the Charlotte, the eldest Brontë, was born, and their books offer markedly different pleasures. The three sisters (Emily and Anne followed Charlotte) wrote Gothic fiction and poetry. Austen satirized upper and upper middle class society’s conventions. Secrets, storms, and the wife in the attic haunt Jane Eyre, while Pride and Prejudice has pompous clergymen and Mr. Collins’s “excellent boiled potatoes.” Austen’s jokes expose the absurdities of courtship and class. Confessions and scandals may momentarily deviate from polite society, but a happily ever after is always a return to the mien. By contrast, the Brontës create worlds far beyond the mannered ton’s scope, both emotionally and geographically.

That division is real, but it can also flatten a much broader literary landscape. Writers like Ann Radcliffe and Frances Burney—whose popularity in their own time might be comparable to the fame that Rebecca Yarros or Emily Henry enjoy today—are less likely to appear on a modern reader’s list. Austen and the Brontës, meanwhile, have become shorthand for different kinds of romance: one witty and social, the other dark and intense. The ability to reduce the stories to appealingly simple distinctions may help explain why it travels so well online, but that multi-media popularity is nothing new.

In fact, just on the movie front, it’s nearly 90 years old. Pride & Prejudice was first adapted in 1940 with Greer Garson and Lawrence Olivier (a lost television series came two years earlier). The Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine-fronted Jane Eyre came in 1944, and ever since the writers have been constantly in our lives on the screen. [...]

The Brontës have their own route into contemporary readers’ lives: Tumblr. Julia Cancilla, a Gen Z writer, found her way to Wuthering Heights through arty accounts on the famously emo social media. She first encountered the novel in quotes and illustrations but didn’t watch any of the film adaptations for a while. “I don’t even know if I really liked it when I first read it, but eventually I did and loved it,” she says. “The Austen stuff, it’s warmer, so it took me longer.” Though Mr. Darcy’s brooding gets to her. [...]

In a 2005 New Yorker review of Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice, Anthony Lane described the film as one in which “Jane Austen has been Brontëfied.” He pointed to its windblown, misty romanticism, then wondered whether audiences could still see Austen clearly after centuries in which “the spirit of romance, and the role of the body within it, have evolved out of all recognition.” To him, Joe Wright’s adaptation felt like a collapse of the two genres. The end result was aesthetically unfaithful to the source material. Perhaps that’s true, but looking back, it’s unclear whether that was a feature or a bug. The books don’t merely live on as portals to a different era— though as Subbana’s experience proves, they do that too—they’re constantly rediscovered and remediated though Hollywood, fanfiction, and, now, TikTok. It is not faithfulness to the original that made Jane Austen and the Brontës immortal, it’s their eager adoption by each new generation.

All of the new media inspired by the authors this year means that 2026 is a prime moment for Gen Z to have their first young adult understandings of the novel. Hopefully, they will then soon have their own turn to create their own turn to adapt and re-frame the original text. If history is anything to go by, we shouldn't have to wait too long to find out. (Dorothy Scarborough)

Sometimes what you need is the simple thing done well.

In a year that's given us aggressively new takes on everything from Homer to Brontë, director Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean) has turned to Jane Austen and boldly dared to do something straightforward. (Boris Jancic)

In early 2026, Wuthering Heights has viewers in a hot debate over whether it’s a good or bad adaptation of Emily Brönte’s [suc] classic novel. While the steamy Jacob Elordi costume drama may be debated over its quality, there are other adaptations of famous books that are far worse. (Brianna Zigler)

‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights centres on the turbulent relationship between Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff and Edgar Linton. Their choices create conflicts that extend beyond the original generation, affecting their families and the children who come after them.

Like East of Eden, the novel explores the way love, resentment and family loyalty can become difficult to separate. Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar rather than Heathcliff sets in motion a series of consequences that affect both families, while Heathcliff turns his grief and anger into a sustained campaign of revenge. His actions ultimately draw a younger generation into conflicts they did not create.

The comparison with Cathy Ames is also useful, although the characters are fundamentally different. Catherine Earnshaw is not defined by the same coldness or manipulation as Cathy, but both women make choices that have profound consequences for the people around them. Wuthering Heights shares with East of Eden an interest in relationships that resist simple definitions of love or hatred, as well as the lasting effects of choices made within one generation. (Chonx Tibajia)

   

Reeta Chakrabarti: Finding Belle, the Brontё influence, and what’s next… at the Brontë Birthplace,

Saturday, 17th of October, 18:30 h

Brontë Birthplace, Posh Parlour

The Brontë Birthplace is delighted to welcome BBC presenter and journalist, Reeta Chakrabarti to the Brontë Birthplace for an intimate interview discussing her debut novel, Finding Belle, and the influence the Brontë sisters have had on her work. 

Finding Belle explores belonging and identity, and what it means to work out who you are without the usual support of family around you.  

   

That said, Gordon counters the narrator’s status by showing the ambitious, ruthless, envious Charlotte in anything but the best light, full of withering slights and maternally over-protective of Anne in particular, refusing permission for a posthumous re-print of The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall (and editing Emily’s poems for publication after her death to boot).

Jess Murray’s Emily is an undiluted firebrand, with a temper and potty mouth, but somewhat underwritten by comparison with Anne and especially Charlotte.

Nick Patrick Jones’s Branwell can be heard shouting at his father in the background and in his infrequent appearances he feels like a ghost in this play, even before he is consigned to that status.

Alongside Jones, Jon Cook, Pamela Gourley and Maggie Smales are on multi-rolling duty, Smales taking the honours with her spoilt child, coconut-clip-clopping carriage driver and biographer Elizabeth Gaskell.

Claire Morley’s witty, wily and waspish production is played out with fiery pace and passion on Richard Hampton’s three-sided set of suspended wheat sheafs, page after page torn from books, three boxes bedecked in yet more words and the backdrop of a frame filled with flowers.

At its base is a sign reading “Liar” that Stafford’s Charlotte then places around the neck of Rhodes’s Anne, and yet not everything that Charlotte says can be taken as the truth. Literary licence, maybe; playwright’s impish, knowing humour, certainly.

The sisters are even more fun company than in Lip Service’s Withering Looks, full of surprises, sassy putdowns (not least of Jane Austen’s face being on a bank note) and sisterly interplay, played out to a soundtrack of Self Esteem, Charlie XCX and Billie Eilish snippets.  It could have been deeper, it could have been darker,  but that is the one story that has been told before.

On reflection, all the Brontë sisters can be seen as the underdog of the title, sisters with blisters, but fighting against cramped writing conditions, the Yorkshire chill that did for their health, and the inequality and cold shoulder of the book world’s stuffed shirts. The “other” here is as much the other side of their story as a desire to put Anne in the spotlight.

“Young women judge older women more harshly than anybody else…they are conditioned to,” says the spiky Charlotte, in one of her jibes delivered so deliciously by Stafford, whose outstanding performance is befitting of a professional stage.

   

An easy Swedish retold translation of Wuthering Heights has been published:

Svindlande höjder

by Emily Brontë

Retold in easy Swedish by Andreas Palmaer

Bannier Carlsen

ISBN: 9789179814908 (ebook)

ISBN: 9789179814915 (paperback)

May 2026

Svindlande höjder hör till den engelska litteraturens mest välkända klassiker och är ständigt aktuell, nu senast som storfilm med med Margot Robbie i rollen som Catherine Earnshaw.

En kväll kommer mr Earnshaw hem till sin gård med en pojke han plockat med sig från gatorna i Liverpool. Hittebarnet Heathcliff har svårt att finna sin plats i familjen och slits mellan hatet till fosterbrodern Hindley och kärleken till fostersystern Catherine. När mr Earnshaw dör och Catherine gifter sig med en barndomsvän blir hämnden Heathcliffs enda mål i livet.