Bollywood Heights!

Bronte goes Bollywood in Oldham next year in a new musical which is being premiered at the Coliseum Theatre.

The tragic tale of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” is normally set in the wild Yorkshire moors.

But the production which opens in March transports Cathy and Heathcliffe to the scorching deserts of Rajasthan in India.

Emily Bronte may be spinning in her Haworth grave when her only novel becomes a sumptuous musical based on her classic tale of passion, jealousy and revenge.

Oldham audiences will be asked to substitute Cathy, the heroine, and Heathcliffe, the brooding anti-hero, and instead visualise 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 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.

Coliseum chief executive Kevin Shaw said: “It is a really exciting project which has been bubbling for a little while now.

“We are only a few miles away from where Wuthering Heights was set, and we have long had an idea of doing some sort of Bollywood extravaganza.

“We are supplying technical teams and supporting development of the show.

“It will be quite an innovative design, because it is touring, but will create the locations very simply yet effectively.

“There will be lots of fabric, some puppets and lots of colour.”

Tamasha’s producer Alex Derbyshire added: “I hope Emily Bronte would be delighted with the reinvention.

We will be true to the storyline of the novel, and we won’t be changing the ending.”

Wuthering Heights will open at the Coliseum on March 13, and runs until March 28. After Oldham, it goes to Exeter, Glasgow, London, Newcastle, Southampton, Coventry, and Harrogate.