When you first heard that Emily Brontë's brooding Victorian love story was going to be staged as a Bollywood musical by Sanjay off of EastEnders, naturally your hopes were high. No matter that the novel, according to the Guardian's Michael Billington, has already been the source for "23 plays, 14 musicals, 16 TV and radio adaptations and eight films". And never mind that Deepak Verma has decided to cut the vengeful second half of the book, thereby bringing his version "closer to Mills and Boon than King Lear" (Billington)
What clearly transcended these quibbles was that, as the Times's Clive Davis puts it, "Brontë's taste for the Gothic and Mumbai's love of melodrama ought to have made a promising match". And after all, everybody loves a bit of Bolly, don't they? What's not to like about an incredibly long and incomprehensible Indian musical? And yet ... you can probably already guess which way this is going to go.
When voicing your opinion you must, like most of the critics, demonstrate that you have really done your best to like this Wuthering Heights musical. A quick string of somewhat feeble compliments should do it. "Kristine Landon-Smith's production makes an agreeable spectacle," says Billington, for instance, adding that, "Sue Mayes's design beautifully evokes russet Rajasthan skies, and the acting is perfectly good."
Or you might observe that Verma's adaptation is "close enough to be familiar and is generally successful," as Ian Shuttleworth of the Financial Times does. "A couple of the songs ... prove haunting, too," says Kate Bassett, piping up to fill an awkward silence in the Independent on Sunday. "I only wish I could recommend [it] with ardency," shrugs the Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish, without any. "You can see how it might look good on the big screen; on stage, it feels dramatically malnourished."
Having tried to like the show, however, it is time to join the chorus of disapproval. Davis, in particular, pulls on his kicking boots. "This half-hearted pairing [of styles] yields neither spectacle nor psychological insight," he thunders. "Felix Cross and Sheema Mukherjee's lip-synched music – specially recorded in India, although you would hardly guess it – is never more than tepid. And Kristine Landon-Smith's direction delivers little of the visual energy that is the hallmark of the Bollywood industry." He pauses to get his breath back. And then he resumes. "The decision to pepper the dialogue with Hindi phrases is irritating too." Boot. Stamp. Bludgeon. "My Indian wife has taught me quite a few over the years, but I was still left in the dark as my neighbours chuckled away."
To avoid being mistaken for one of Davis's neighours, you might finally want to point out that if you did chuckle, it was only because you found a moment that was laugh-out-loud bad. Helpfully, Bassett has provided this example: "'She walks across the sand, like she's floating on air,' croons the smitten Vijay," Bassett observes, "even as Youkti Patel's Shakuntala hobbles out of a wheelchair, recovering from a gunshot wound to the calf. I know love is blind, but this is ridiculous."
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