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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 168 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 168, October 1993.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Thérèse Raquin
by Emile Zola
Emile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin caused a sensation on its publication in the 1860s. The accusations of pornography and filth which were hurled at it led Zola to produce a detailed definition of the ‘scientific naturalism’ at the heart of his writing:
‘I have chosen people completely dominated by their nerves and blood, without free will, drawn to each action of their lives by the inexorable laws of their physical nature... in a word, I had only one desire: given a highly sexed man and an unsatisfied woman, to uncover the animal side of them and see that alone, then throw them together in a violent drama and note down with scrupulous care the sensations and actions of these creatures. I simply applied to two living bodies the analytical method that surgeons apply to corpses.’
Moralistic charges, Zola argued, could not be levelled at what he saw as a scientific study of human behaviour.
The characters in Thérèse Raquin were not real people, but the product of Zola’s own view of human behaviour. His characters are controlled not only by their physical environment, which he describes in immense detail, but also by deeper instincts. They are driven by forces they do not understand and have no way of challenging.
Thérèse and her lover Laurent – having murdered Thérèse’s meek and sickly husband, Camille – are driven into a frenzy of guilt and despair. Ensnared together through their actions, the lovers spiral towards their bloody end – each despises, torments and blames the other, attempts at lovemaking are interrupted by the vision of Camille’s rotting corpse, death seems inevitable.
It is a bleak appraisal of human behaviour, but the novel at least is a compelling thriller. Unfortunately, this new adaption is anything but compelling. For a production billed as the new visual theatre, with sexual themes relevant for a contemporary audience, it is surprisingly lacking in any dramatic impact.
Technically everything is in place. The set is impressive. The squalid atmosphere of Thérèse Raquin’s shabby haberdashery shop in a dank Parisian alleyway is brilliantly recreated. The stifling lives of the characters are caught behind glass windows, which unfold to reveal the simmering emotions inside. The morgue scene is particularly inventive – using lighting and sound to conjure up a vivid image of death and decay.
But the set doesn’t save the play from becoming a plodding and overlong drama. To translate Zola’s novel effectively, the audience needs to be caught up in the rising emotions of the characters. But this is where the play stumbles most.
Partly this is to do with ineffective dramatic devices. Camille, for example, is played like a classic sit-com idiot. It is impossible to imagine such a character could move anyone to murder, let alone to feel guilty about it. In fact the comic interludes throughout are misplaced.
The characters keep the audience up to date with the story by reading directly from Zola’s narrative. Sometimes this works, but more often it kills the tension. And because the audience had not been pulled into the story, the lovemaking scene early in the play and the hysteria at the end became embarrassing melodrama. In the performance I saw there were muffled giggles at what should have been the height of tragedy.
In the end I felt cheated by the visual tricks which promised so much but covered up for rather poor acting and shallow storytelling.
Thérèse Raquin plays at the Young Vic, London
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