SERIAL spoofing double act Lip Service mischievously sent up Wuthering Heights in Withering Looks; fellow jokers Oddsocks had Cathy and Heathcliff in a permanent strop on the Moors in a tinsel-and-tantrum Christmas version a few years ago.

The jokes were intentional on those occasions, but how come sniggers could be heard at the York Theatre Royal press night on Tuesday? Such a response would have had Emily Bronte skipping supper once more for a lonely stomp across the heather.

Playright Jane Thornton may have cut her teeth on comedy, yet the reaction to Sue Dunderdale's ragged production of her 2003 adaptation was not born of Thornton's comedic prowess.

Granted, Marshall Lancaster's cameo characterisation of the perennially gloomy old Joseph - jaw set like Wildred Brambell's Steptoe - was intentionally humorous, and so too were the wimpy actions of the excellent Lancaster's weakling Linton.

However, it was the production's forlorn struggle for intense passion that sparked the dismissive half-time chatter over the scrum for free sausages and burgers. One name was on everyone's lips: Heathcliff, and not since Cliff Richard's hammy musical 11 years ago has an actor looked so uncomfortable in this elemental role.

Joel Fry was talent-spotted by Dunderdale while at RADA and is destined for his film breakthrough in 10,000 BC next year, but it could be another 10,000 years before he is asked back to York. He has the look of a young Jimi Hendrix, even dressing not unlike him, but he mumbled and shuffled and slouched, and his diction was as languid as his gait.

Almost perversely, Fry is at his loudest when singing flat on his back on Lorna Ritchie's bizarre set of strips of ripped sheets, metal steps and strands of wool, with not a Yorkshire moor in sight. Save for its sense of height and wind, it is as characterless as Fry.

Thornton says she focused on the passion in her adaptation, and the still inexperienced Fry needs to show a whole heap more, particularly as he is the only actor who plays just one role in this five-hander. He has to be the play's tempestuous force, around which everyone takes their turn to die, but he isn't.

Jessica Harris's Catherine Earnshaw/Catherine Linton lack variety of emotion and vocal tone, and she is too light. Yet Thornton's fast-moving script, with its multiple narrators and swift scene and costume changes, can work well, as proved by Nick Figgis and Kate Ambler joining Lancaster in rising above the problems.

Richard Taylor's musical settings of Bronte poems are a successful innovation, but no moor, no more, Wuthering Heights is a worrying low in a misfiring year at the Theatre Royal.


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