Thérèse Raquin, adapted from the Emile Zola novel by Gary Abrahams, A Dirty Pretty Theatre and Critical Stages Production, is coming to the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre from July 20–22.
The situations in the play are indeed timeless. An unhappy wife. A self-centred husband. A passionate affair that sparks a desperate desire to end the marriage. What sounds like a modern day melodrama is an adaption of French writer Emile Zola’s 1873 gothic thriller.
Thérèse Raquin continues to be popular with theatregoers passionate about high quality period drama, and this recent adaptation is no exception, wowing audiences in its world premiere season in Melbourne.
Set in the notoriously dingy back streets of Paris in the late 1800s, Thérèse lives a life of solitude and desperation. After being married off to her sickly cousin in an arranged marriage, her melancholy is marred by the arrival of Laurent, her husband’s friend, with whom she begins a passionate, feverish affair.
This tempestuous love triangle soon heads into dangerous territory, with Thérèse and Laurent moving from lust to love and then hate after taking drastic action to get Camille out of their lives. What follows in this masterpiece of French literature makes for a gripping, corseted thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat.
This adaptation reinvigorates the text’s shocking power, re-creates the visual splendour of 1800s Paris with its set and costumes, and creates a psychologically intense mood with an original piano composition performed live by Christopher De Groot.
Dirty Pretty Theatre is one of Melbourne’s most exciting independent companies, presenting evocative narrative theatre based on literary works created with a highly theatrical aesthetic.
Nominated for Green Room Awards for best production, best director, best leading actor and actress, best lighting, sound and costume design, Thérèse Raquin is “beautifully paced and engaging theatre… An imaginative and immersive adaptation, directed with skill and style,” said The Age.
Thérèse Raquin was initially labelled “obscene”. It turns the city of love into the sinister setting for murder.
Tickets are available at 4723 7600 or online www.thejoan.com.au.
