Peter Crawleyreviews The Heightsat Project Cube, Dublin
"I am Heathcliff," professes Cathy Earnshaw, her romantic declaration carrying such familiarity that, for this stage adaptation, it has now been emblazoned on her T-shirt. Spelled out in a chunky font that recalls a more recently iconic slogan, "Frankie Say Relax", it becomes a quote within a quote, a double adaptation. It also sums up both the ambition and the problem with Playgroup's take on Emily Brontë's classic novel, Wuthering Heights, one that is buoyed with a playful wit but weighed down by its own concept.
Transposing the tale from the 19th-century Yorkshire Moors to an unspecified but considerably less wuthered contemporary city, The Heightsbegins with the novel's surviving generation: Catherine Linton, Hareton Earnshaw and Linton Heathcliff. Peeking out uncertainly at the audience from a stage cluttered with microphones, musical instruments and costume rails, they mutter their introductions and set about enacting the story of their parents, here imagined as celebrities of the 1980s arts scene.
"I don't really want to be here," says Raymond Scannell's Hareton, who will enact the role of Heathcliff. "I'm just here to set the record straight."
What follows, however, is anything but a straight reading. Tom Creed's production has the giddy swirl of dramaturgy gone wild, amassing allusions and associations as though the idea has been to adapt not just the novel but the cultural phenomenon. There is something wryly appropriate about hearing Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apartor the Sex Pistols' Pretty Vacant, for instance, which the cast perform live using laptops and loop stations, and which herald the tempestuous relationships to come.
But with snippets of Jenny Holzer's Truisms flashing still more mordant commentary on a digital display above ("A single event can have infinitely many interpretations"), while the performers sing, or recite from the original text, or improvised dialogue, we end up drowning in text, often at the expense of subtext or a clear context.
The raw, unfettered passion of the novel, which renders it equally romantic and gothic, doesn't fit with the knowing wink of this production. Here, characters are always at arm's length (Hillary O'Shaughnessy, for example, must contend with the fact that she is playing Cat Linton, who is in turn playing Catherine Earnshaw), while plot developments and emotional impact are obscured and overwhelmed by the gaudy excesses of 1980s pop and costumes, which can never be taken seriously.
Will O'Connell manages an unexpectedly affecting shift into the role of Isabella Linton, donning high heels and shades with a commanding seriousness of purpose, and at such moments there is a hint at what the production has been striving for - finding a disarming new way to access the effect of a classic.
For all its effort, though, and the clear talent of its makers, the show barely makes a mark on the original.
"The whole story would get dragged up again and again," laments young Cat, which may also be the problem with adding to the tower of Wuthering Heightsadaptations. What more is there to say?
Runs until February 16th
