Heathcliffe’s magnificent in Gate adaptation
Icannot live without my life! I cannot live without my love!’ wails the distraught Heathcliff when Cathy has died. And many adaptors of Wuthering Heights for the stage and screen must have felt exactly the same about a vital character disappearing half way through the book. How can you convey the power of sublimated lust and selfdestructive love without the two lovers who tear themselves and everyone around them to pieces?
The best adaptations have usually solved the problem by dumping the second half of the book with its philosophical undertones. As does Anne-Marie Casey in this highly atmospheric adaptation.
It’s helped enormously by the towering performance of Tom Canton as Heathcliff, that could compete in a smouldering contest with Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff in the 1939 film.
The first half, despite a fine oppressive opening, suffers the inevitable problem of introducing characters and background, and telescoping time. The plight of the two self-obsessed lovers, and their passionate entanglement, have to compete with lots of other detail.
Portraying the child Heathcliff as a Gaelic-speaking waif is an interesting idea, but it draws too much attention to itself, without throwing light on Mr Earnshaw’s fondness for the boy.
The dramatic content ratchets up considerably in the second half. With Cathy in residence as Edgar’s wife, and Edgar’s sister feeling alone and displaced, the stage is set for Heathcliff ’s revenge to bring misery and disruption all round. Tom Canton’s Heathcliff isn’t just a malicious threatening force, he physically dominates every scene and his grief over a distorted life is genuinely moving. But his attempted ravishing of Cathy just looks like a clumsy attempt to jazz things up in a relationship where the almost tangible social constraints are part of the erotic tension.
Kate Brennan’s Cathy comes vividly alive as she sees the results of her recklessness, even as her selfishness grows progressively greater, and her despairing scene with a torn pillow is almost a re-run of the mad Ophelia spraying herbs in Hamlet.
The narration by Nelly Dean is used sparingly and performed beautifully by Fiona Bell. Bosco Hogan is an excellent Lockwood, but it’s a pity that in some of the lesser roles there was occasional rushed, unclear diction.
Overall, though, this chilling piece of passionate gloom might well be the antidote to too much on-stage Christmas jollity.