![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Therese Raquin
Aug. 4th, 2014 04:24 pmMy holiday week finished by SM and I going to the Theatre Royal in Bath to see Therese Raquin. I had read Zola’s book many years ago but had forgotten the plot in the meantime. Spoilers follow for anyone who doesn’t know the story.
This was a recent stage adaptation by Helen Edmundson and I wasn’t taken with it. Admittedly for the first half I was sat next to a woman whose hearing aid was whistling so badly that I had to sit with my hand over my ear. We moved seats for the second half, so that was an improvement.
However it didn’t improve the play itself. There were innumerable scene and costume changes which were a total distraction. Each time Therese changed her dress she would do so on stage, with the assistance of what was presumably a maid, although there was no mention of a maid and no interaction between the two as would have been expected.
The scene changes involved bringing on either a bed or a table and chairs, which were placed by balletic actors, who had no other role within the play. I’m used to thrust stages, where the actors bring on and remove the props, but here this was done by the ensemble, who played no part otherwise and their choreographed turns drew attention to what they were doing. There was no doubt a reason for this, but I failed to appreciate it.
The most effective scene was when Laurent kills Camille in the rowing boat. That was extremely well done, and while much of the rest of the play seemed stylised this was brutal and clearly proved much harder than Laurent anticipated.
The second half overall was an improvement on the first – no doubt helped by the absence of whistle – as the play builds to its inevitable climax. But I was left with the feeling that it took a long time to say very little and that had the staging and costume changes been somewhat reduced and the characters given more opportunity to express themselves, rather than the audience being left to infer what was going on from external actions, it would have been improved.
This was a recent stage adaptation by Helen Edmundson and I wasn’t taken with it. Admittedly for the first half I was sat next to a woman whose hearing aid was whistling so badly that I had to sit with my hand over my ear. We moved seats for the second half, so that was an improvement.
However it didn’t improve the play itself. There were innumerable scene and costume changes which were a total distraction. Each time Therese changed her dress she would do so on stage, with the assistance of what was presumably a maid, although there was no mention of a maid and no interaction between the two as would have been expected.
The scene changes involved bringing on either a bed or a table and chairs, which were placed by balletic actors, who had no other role within the play. I’m used to thrust stages, where the actors bring on and remove the props, but here this was done by the ensemble, who played no part otherwise and their choreographed turns drew attention to what they were doing. There was no doubt a reason for this, but I failed to appreciate it.
The most effective scene was when Laurent kills Camille in the rowing boat. That was extremely well done, and while much of the rest of the play seemed stylised this was brutal and clearly proved much harder than Laurent anticipated.
The second half overall was an improvement on the first – no doubt helped by the absence of whistle – as the play builds to its inevitable climax. But I was left with the feeling that it took a long time to say very little and that had the staging and costume changes been somewhat reduced and the characters given more opportunity to express themselves, rather than the audience being left to infer what was going on from external actions, it would have been improved.
