Therese a Mess

Well, I'm two for three this week, anyway.

Marianne Elliot's production of Therese Raquin at the National got very mixed reviews, and now I understand why. Nicholas Wright has written a deliciously Anglicized adaptation of Zola's first play. You can see how Zola's goal of showing people as they actually are was so revolutionary in his time.

The acting is first-rate as well. Patrick Kennedy is a delightfully inept as Camille; you're sorry to see him go after the first act, which he dominates verbally if not physically. Judy Parfitt is in fine form as his mother, and Ben Daniels and Charlotte Emerson as the adulterous leads are really rather good.

The first half of the show is much better than the second, and this has very little to do with the actors themselves or the script rather than with the staging. Elliot has interspersed all these sort of freeze frame moments in between the four acts of the play. A scrim comes down at the front of the stage, and the actors are illumined briefly in nonverbal moments. I loved the way this was done at the end of Act One, as Therese went to the bathroom, removed her top, and washed herself. Wonderfully symbolic, and very fitting with Zola's whole scheme.

I got concerned though at the end of Act Two. As Laurent and Therese kiss, signaling their engagement, the actors freeze as the scrim comes down and we hear the sounds of splashing water and Camille screaming "Stop her! Stop her!" Now on the one hand, this was a nice moment, as it signaled the guilt that underlay the lovers' official union, and cut against Laurent's account of Camille's dying words -- that he asked him to take care of his wife.

But the splashing sounds and Camille screaming have absolutely nothing to do with naturalism and everything to do with expressionism. I am hardly an aesthetic purist, I don't think it's necessarily a problem to mix different theatrical styles.

But Therese Raquin is all about the small moments. That's where its symbolism derives its greatest power. For instance, the domino game that ends Act One -- with Camille about to play -- is echoed at the start of Act Two, with Laurent taking his place (and the domino box similarly raised in his hands). There's the painting of Camille, with its garish green glow, which hangs on the wall throughout the first half, is moved off stage for the wedding night in Act Three, but appears again in Act Four when the door to Mme. Raquin's room is left open and Camille stares out from the interior at the back of the stage.

These touches are great, but unfortunately they are overwhelmed by special effects. Yes, that's right, Marianne Elliot has managed to make a groundbreaking naturalistic play all about the special effects, at least in its second half, as the newly married couple is overcome with guilt and shame.

I wouldn't have a problem with special effects in a Zola play if they worked -- as they did, operating minimally for maximum effect, in the first half. But in the second half, they really do take over. And in most annoying fashion: Laurent describes hearing a hammering sound in his head, which the audience hears for a good twenty minutes before and after his remark. (I for one needed an aspirin after.)

In the most excessive moment of the night, as Therese waits for Laurent to come up after their wedding, she has a vision of him in a darkened, windy passage. This is formed by having an enormous wall of the set (some three stories high) swing open into the room, with all the requisite sound and lighting effects to indicate a windstorm. The moment is pure expressionism, and about as far from Zola as you can get.

The other big problem with Elliot's approach is that some of the moments later in the show ended up verging on camp. Perhaps this is because many of the elements of the play have been so often repeated since Zola pioneered them, in cheesy movies and soap operas as well, so that the tropes are all too familiar. The live music, very heavy on violins, was so constant in the second half (except during the hammering sound) that it amped up the cheese effect. This was most notable in the sequence with Mme. Raquin after her stroke, particularly when she started to write out a message with her fingers. The moment was not so much suspenseful as ludicrous -- not what Zola had in mind, nor I should think Ms. Elliot's intention, either.

I am looking forward to more Nicholas Wright, anyway. His new play The Reporter opens soon -- once again, in the Lyttleton. Have to go and have a butcher's at that.