Stars get a taste of a real wild and windy moor

WUTHERING Heights...Youtki Patel (left) and Pushpinder Chani on Denshaw Moors

BOLLYWOOD met Lancashire when the stars of the Coliseum’s latest show took a tour of Saddleworth.

The tragic tale of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is famously set in the wild Yorkshire Moors.

But the latest interpretation of the classic play transports Cathy and Heathcliffe to the scorching deserts of Rajasthan in India.

Youtki Patel and Pushpinder Chani — the stars of the show — visited the Denshaw Moors to experience the more traditional setting for the novel.

Oldham audiences have seen Cathy, the heroine, and Heathcliffe, the brooding anti-hero, become Shakuntala, the beautiful and head-strong daughter of merchant Singh, and Krishan, the wild street urchin that Singh adopts.

Thrown together as unlikely siblings, their adolescent play soon turns into tumultuous passion.

But — just like 19th century Yorkshire — Indian society has its taboos and hierarchies, and Shakuntala yearns for the riches and status that only local playboy Vijay can provide.

The show, which runs until March 28, is being co-produced by Tamasha, the award-winning London based-theatre company, founded in 1989, which also commissioned the first production of “East is East”.

The production is influenced by Indian cinema, from brooding black-and-white epics of the 1950s, to colourful contemporary blockbusters.