WUTHERING HEIGHTS

★★★

Lyttelton Theatre until March 19, nationaltheatre.org.uk

Emma Rice’s staggering adaptation of Jane Eyre viscerally melded music, movement, pared-down sets and an incisive script. She attacks Emily Brontë’s novel with more of the same but less success.

The brooding landscape has always seemed the third wheel to Heathcliff and Cathy’s melodrama and here the moors are physically embodied by the interchanging cast, their singing, narration and movement powerfully led by Nandi Bhebhe.

Performance artist Lucy McCormick’s Cathy, pictured, is a gurning, wide-eyed explosion of madness and pain, ending Act One with a roared rock anthem. Her jagged, broken love torments Heathcliff in life and from the grave, intensifying his misanthropy. Ash Hunter’s Heathcliff is a cold, bruised and pitiless soul. Never have these literary lovers been so unlikeable, and it makes it hard to care.

The adaptation deftly acknowledges the novel’s confusing timeframes and characters with witty signs and asides, and the exuberant cast double and triple up on roles. Sam Archer and Katy Owen gaily ham up the poncey neighbouring Lintons before she plays her own son, the pitiful Little Linton, for more giggles.

However, the humour increasingly jars with the underlying darkness in a bold adaptation that struggles with tone, pacing (the first act is far too long) and connection. It is all wildly overblown and yet, strangely, not Gothic enough.