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For years the Yorkshire based company has been slowly mired in ever more elaborate productions with costly shlock horror stage effects and cute takes on traditional stories, virtually relegating the dancers to clothes pegs. Choreographer and new artistic director, David Nixon, a former dancer himself, has now reversed the process. With Ali Allen's minimal scenery, pictorial music by Claude-Michel Les Miserables Schonberg, principal dancers Jonathan Ollivier (Heathcliff) and Charlotte Talbot (Cathy) make mincemeat of our emotions, which is just as it should be. Never mind that the Yorkshire Moors have an unrelenting black Satanic dreariness nor that occasionally the music tries too hard (tinkling music box for aristos, thundering drums for passionate peasants), there's a lot of dancing and if Nixon's steps are often contrived, they are always ambitious and made the best of by the dancers.

Charlotte Talbot as Cathy in David Nixon's Wuthering Heights
Photograph by John Ross ©

The familiar story is simply told, how orphan Heathcliff and Cathy's romance is spoiled by Cathy's preference for the local toff, Edgar (Hironao Takahashi); she breaks Heathcliff's heart and dies when he breaks hers a simple tale of country folk that clearly pressed all the right buttons for the opening night's audience.

Nixon really gets his teeth into Act II, relegating the Moors to a view from the windows of Thrushcross Grange, the scene of Cathy's perfidy, until her final bust up with Heathcliff, and using a series of duets detailing the disintegrating relationships between the hard working Talbot, her husband and her leather clad lover. It goes on too long, and we have seen the formula used so frequently in works by more gifted choreographers, but though she grunts with Heathcliff better than she simpers with Edgar, Talbot's fluid dancing and Ollivier's powerful personality are riveting.

Charlotte Talbot as Cathy in David Nixon's Wuthering Heights
Photograph by John Ross ©

Jeremy Kerridge's Joseph, Cathy's family's old retainer oozes disapproval from every pore. As he polishes the boots his shoulder blades shout such eternal truths as There ll be tears before bedtime, and She's no better than she should be . But Nixon's triumph is in giving his company an honest and meaty dance/drama, not a gimmicky drama/dance and his dancers look sharper, stronger and more confident for it. Welcome back NBT.