Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's romantic novel set in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors, is to be turned into a Bollywood stage musical.

The tale of the tempestuous love affair between Heathcliff and Catherine is being relocated to the Rajasthan desert.

Deepak Verma, the writer, and the Tamasha theatre company are collaborating on the project, which will debut at the Oldham Coliseum next March before touring Britain.

"It is not like putting a square peg into a round hole," said Kristine Landon-Smith, Tamasha's artistic director.

"I thought of the harsh landscape in the original book, and if you put some swelling Bollywood music behind it you already almost have a Bollywood film. It just felt to me that it was a perfect match. There are points where the emotions get so high that they have to sing instead of speak. It's natural why it should be a musical."

Although Tamasha has already transposed the works of Emile Zola, the French novelist, to an Asian setting, this is the London-based company's first attempt to marry a musical to classic literature.

Rather than being a "high-octane and colourful" production, Landon-Smith said it will have a "moody, Chekovian feel".

"But we're not going to go too far," she told the Sunday Herald. "The production has to meet some of the expectations for a feel-good Bollywood musical."

The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth described the Bollywood Wuthering Heights as "a fairly radical reinterpretation".