Wuthering Heights follows Heathcliff’s life from his early years until he died in his late 30s. After rising to rank in his adopted family, Heathcliff falls back to the position of servant and disappears when the girl he loves chooses to wed someone else. A small cast at ISL performed the play, and while a small production, the performance was strong.
Looking at the main characters Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, both characters were played with elegance and were extremely convincing. You can see a clear character development between these two actors, as they change from innocent to almost greedy and diabolical. While all the cast were strong, some cast members were stronger than others. One thing to note is that throughout the play there are flashbacks, and fast forwards as it goes through Heathclif’s life from 7 to 30 years old. But in this production, these time changes are not clear. While the initial time change is clear, from the end of his life to the beginning … The rest of them were difficult to decipher. When watching, I also noticed how the director tried to shorten the play (of course) however, this caused the ending to be extremely abrupt. I was not able to hear a clear ending line, which made the ending difficult to navigate, and very sudden.
After watching the play, I went and interviewed a few students in the cast and the tech team. I found it very interesting how a certain part of the play is actually improvised ( try and see if you can spot it), and I had not noticed. This shows a clear connection between the cast members, as they can all bounce off of each other and make it look flawless.
After speaking with a few students in the tech team, who have seen this production in the works, they made it clear that they believed this play was meant for an older age demographic. Being younger students, they believe the theme “Dark Romance” was slightly uninteresting to them, but could be enjoyed by an older, more mature audience.
Overall, a strong performance by the cast, nevertheless a few aspects could always be refined.
