From left, Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in the 1939 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” still my favorite of the many adaptations, never more so than in this scene of the wild, rough-hewn characters on their beloved Yorkshire moors. I keep a framed copy of this movie still in my library.

'Frost from fire' -- perversity and identity in 'Wuthering Heights'

February 19, 2026

As a collector of “Wuthering Heights” interpretations —Emily Brontë’s novel being the inspiration for my revenge family drama “Seamless Sky” — I was intrigued then disappointed by the announcement of a new film adaptation. I haven’t seen it, but what I have seen of it makes me think Margot Robbie is all wrong for the part of Cathy, not the least of which being that she’s a blonde.

The fair Ralph Fiennes and the French Juliette Binoche would’ve seemed all wrong for the 1992 film “Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.” But they have such talent and chemistry that they are among my favorite Cathys and Healthcliffs, never more so than in their scenes on the Yorkshire moors where their perverse, almost Luciferian defiance of everything and everyone but themselves and the natural world sows the seeds for their haunting, destructive story arc.

Send in the clowns -- Boris and the Donald

July 29, 2019

Graig Nettles, the great New York Yankees’ third baseman of the 1970s, once observed that if you want an entertainer, hire (comedian) George Jessel — meaning that he was paid to hit and vacuum up ground balls from opposing batsmen, something he was quite entertaining at.

But in today’s world, it’s not enough to be good at what you do. You have to be relatable.

‘The undiscovered country’: Oscar Isaacs in ‘Hamlet’

July 25, 2017

I am a collector of “Hamlets.”

My first stage experience of Shakespeare’s best play occurred when I was 15 and saw the now-defunct American Shakespeare Festival’s production with Brian Bedford in the title role. It was striped tights, codpieces and an emphasis on Hamlet’s friendship with Horatio. I can still see Bedford, whom I would later interview about the part, being carried off the stage at the end – his head thrown back, his long, dark hair cascading. I loved it, though that may not have been my first “Hamlet” experience. ...

‘A world elsewhere,” continued: Ted Cruz and ‘Coriolanus’

July 24, 2016

Much has been made recently about Ted Cruz going Marc Antony – the Roman general, not the singer – on The Donald at the Republican National Convention in a speech in which he congratulated the Trumpster but declined to endorse him. This sent some political and literary experts alike scurrying to Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” in which Antony – a Caesar ally who is waylaid by the conspirators on the day of Caesar’s assassination – turns the tables on the assassins in his famous “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” eulogy.

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,” he says, but praise him he does, however subtly, sealing the murderers’ fates.

The analogy here is to Cruz’s call to “vote your conscience,” thereby undermining Trump’s bid for party unity. ...