A harrowing tale of people being unrelentingly horrible to each other, “Wuthering Heights” has fascinated readers and viewers of its innumerable film adaptations for generations. And now English director/adaptor Emma Rice’s stage version is set to dazzle Berkeley Repertory Theatre audiences in its West Coast premiere.

Emily Brontë’s only novel, “Wuthering Heights” was first published in 1847, along with her sisters Charlotte and Anne’s novels “Jane Eyre” and “Agnes Grey” respectively, all under male pseudonyms. A year later Emily died of tuberculosis at the age of 30.

“‘Wuthering Heights’ is such a big part of the British culture, it’s been in my life always,” Rice says in a Zoom call from the U.K. “I’m from the middle of England, and we used to go up to the Yorkshire moors for holidays. I can remember walking with my mum when I was little to go and see the ruin that they think inspired ‘Wuthering Heights.’ And I was very, very disappointed. It’s this pile of tiny bricks in the middle of nowhere that I’d been forced to walk to in the rain. And then I loved it as a teenager. I loved the gothic romance of it.”

“Wuthering Heights” is the story of the mysterious orphan Heathcliff and his campaign of unrelenting vengeance against the upper-class family that took him in and mistreated him. It’s also a tale of the doomed love between him and his foster sister Cathy that ties them together even as they torment each other.

“It’s agonizing to watch people be the worst of themselves,” Rice reflects. “But I do feel there’s a motor under there which pulls you through, because you understand these people, and you are willing them through. Emily Brontë makes us work for it, but she does give us hope. But my goodness, it’s hard fought for. And I love it for that.”

The former artistic director of Cornwall’s Kneehigh Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe in London, Rice founded her own touring theater company, Wise Children, in 2017, kicking off with a stage adaptation of Angela Carter’s 1991 novel of the same name.

With Kneehigh, Rice wowed audiences with “Brief Encounter” at American Conservatory Theater in 2009 and a string of shows at Berkeley Rep starting in 2011: “The Wild Bride” (twice), “Tristan & Yseult,” “An Audience with Meow Meow” and “946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips.”

Rice decided that she had to adapt ‘Wuthering Heights’ in 2016, spurred by the Syrian refugee crisis that led to large migrant camps such as the Calais Jungle in France (as seen in the play “The Jungle” that came to the Curran in 2019).

“Of the many conversations that were happening, one of them was how many unaccompanied child refugees would Britain be willing to take in,” Rice recalls. “And I can remember raging at the radio, ‘Take them all, for goodness’ sake!’ If we can’t take in the most vulnerable human beings on the planet, we have no right to be frightened of what might happen to us in 20 years. And I thought, wasn’t Heathcliff an unaccompanied child refugee? So I pulled down my copy, and he was. He was found on the Liverpool docks. He has dark skin and dark hair, and he speaks a foreign language that nobody understands. In my version, I can remember when I decided to write in the words, ‘Be careful what you seed.’ If we do not seed compassion and care, be careful what happens.”

Rice describes her adaptation as “epic, elemental, musical, and hopeful.” As Berkeley audiences have learned to expect from her work, it’s full of music and dance, puppets and dynamic theatricality.

“I would say this is the best I’ve ever done,” she adds. “As I get older and my teams mature, we keep pushing ourselves.”

Rice does away with the character of Nelly Dean, the chatty servant who narrates most of the novel, replacing her with the Yorkshire Moors themselves personified as a sort of Greek chorus.

“I don’t really find adapting hard, because you have to be so simple,” Rice says. “You have to know what the best bits are and then thread them together. The hardest job is to distill such a huge, rich novel into under three hours. And there’s another job, which I love, which is making it understandable, because it’s a very confusing book. All the names sound the same, and everybody’s related. But I love that, because my background is in telling stories to children. So I feel that I’m very good at saying, Don’t worry, we’re going to look after you.”

Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and follow him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.

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‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS’

Adapted by Emma Rice from the novel by Emily Brontë, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre

When: Nov. 18-Jan. 1

Where: Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley

Tickets: $19.50-$124; 510-647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org