TripAdvisor - France

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Therese Raquin
by Émile Zola, adapted by Nicholas Wright

    Six years after it appeared as a novel, Émile Zola’s Therese Raquin was staged under his own adaptation. In 1873 this four-act play about cumulative guilt was something of a revelation. It is set mostly in the fringes of its own story, concentrating on the build up to and aftermath of what would usually be ‘significant’ action. Its characters are largely unsympathetic, drawn more from the social currents of nineteenth century France than the conventions of dramatic theatre. It is a harsh and ugly play with frustrated characters trapped in wells of emotion which they find difficult to understand even more difficult to express. They are selfish and egocentric, mired in a world in a state of terminal decay.
    The story charts the downward spiral of secret lovers who carry out the murder of the woman’s husband. It’s a classic case of not being careful what you wish for, as the deed (or rather first the anticipation and then the consequences of it) traps rather than liberates them. This is true not merely psychologically, but physically, as all of the action takes place within the rancid confines of the Parisian apartment they must share with her dead husband’s mother.
    Yes there are echoes of Macbeth here, not least of all in its female lead whose responsibility for the murder runs deeper than she will admit to herself, but Therese Raquin was, for the nineteenth century, the herald of a new kind of theatre. The term ‘naturalism’ would later be applied to works of this type, even by Zola himself. Its focus was not so much on the broad strokes of plot and dramatic action as on the details. According to its proponents, naturalist theatre should demonstrate observation. It should be rational and scientific, with characters whose personalities are informed by an awareness of political and social conditions and a knowledge of human behaviour in its habitat. Psychology was no longer the contrivance of melodrama, but an identifiable reality rooted in physical and social environment. The correlation between the individual and society in dramatic fiction could now be literal rather than metaphoric. Zola, whose political consciousness would later bring him notoriety following the Dreyfus affair, was writing social tracts using plots and characters which willfully blurred the distinction between art and life.
    It didn’t take long for naturalism to be superseded by even more ‘realistic’ and polemical types of theatre, nor indeed for extremely non-naturalistic forms to supplant those. Almost a hundred and thirty years after its debut, Therese Raquin offers few surprises. Aspects of it seem quite arch. Its tableaux of figures framed against a stage environment which resembles a period painting seem lifeless and, for want of a better word, stagy. Its endless expositional dialogue slows the action to a crawl, especially during the first half. Things become livelier after the interval during acts three and four when the characters seem to have done enough explaining and evading and participate in scenes of confrontation which propel the plot on their own. Worst of all, the play’s potency seems to have dissipated with the passing of the social conditions which were so important to it, leaving little for a contemporary director to work with if intending to stay faithful to the text.
    Yet for all that, the Gate Theatre’s new production works well. Adapted by Nicholas Wright from the French original, it doesn’t attempt to update the story to compensate for its vintage. Instead the audience is asked to understand why Zola wrote it the way he did and re-engage with the polemic on the level originally intended, even if through the filter of a century of history. Impressively staged and capably performed, the play succeeds in creating and sustaining an oppressive atmosphere which the audience is all to eager to escape by laughing at the mild gags scattered throughout. An excellent set designed by Joe Vanek and lit by Peter Mumford bathes the action in a cadaverous green which immediately calls to mind of a brand of nineteenth century urban decay associated with these kinds of restrained and hypocritical characters.
    The staging and lighting are very effective at linking psychic and physical space. The characters find themselves trapped in various corners and quadrants either alone or in small groupings which indicate the dynamics of their relationships with one another. Apart from the more obvious moments where the spectral figure of the murdered man pops up from time to time (including once inside a painting), there are many scenes in which the interaction between the actors, props, and set are vital to the overall meaning (just as Zola would have intended). Though it frequently comes across as a hybrid of theatre and painting, this works in terms of the attempt to (re)create the correct environment for this particular story, and it conveys the sense that a deeper immobility binds these characters to their surroundings. In a world where meaningless conversation merely illustrates theme by inference (such as all the talk of murder and scandal carried on by houseguests before the actual murder occurs), only what we see tells the real story.
    For this reason the performances also come under close scrutiny. Veteran performers Des Cave, Barry McGovern and Susan FitzGerald are good in their supporting roles, especially FitzGerald who comes into her own in the final scenes by showing just how important the voice can be when the body is incapable of expressing itself (her character has suffered a kind of stroke and can barely move). Cave and McGovern craft vivid personalities in delivery, gesture, and mannerism, and though they do little to advance the plot (bearing in mind that plot is not really the issue), they demonstrate what Zola was trying to achieve with ‘irrelevant’ observation. Mark O’Halloran is faintly irritating as the doomed husband, but this is probably deliberate, and Fidelma Keogh is fine as a more cheery and romantic girl whose primary function seems to be to offset the dourness of her elders.
    The leading role is filled by Donna Dent. It is a difficult part to play for many reasons, not least of all the fact that for most of the first half she spends her time sitting almost motionless staring out of a window, a young woman presumed to have no life of her own anyway and therefore literally at the fringes of society. It eventually becomes clear that she is repressing a great deal of emotion (and sexual energy), and Dent must carefully control how she lets this out. As the play goes on Therese becomes more expressive (and more angry), and the actress demonstrates good judgment in the pacing of her hysteria. The climactic scenes are powerful, especially because the play has been such a slow burn all along, but it never becomes bombastic. Phelim Drew is in a similar predicament as Therese's lover and is generally good physically, but his delivery is not always as resonant and the character is not clearly enough defined to justify his final, startling burst of self-awareness.

    Dublin, February 13, 2001                                                                              - Harvey O'Brien