Thérèse Raquin, Park Theatre - theatre review

Nona Shepphard’s musical adaptation of Emile Zola’s novel occasionally calls to mind the operatic horror of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd
Unhappy marriage: Jeremy Legat and Julie Atherton as Camille and Thérèse (Pic: Darren Bell Photography)
Darren Bell Photography
Henry Hitchings8 October 2014

Set in a dank corner of 1860s Paris, Emile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin pictures adultery and murder. It examines the consequences of guilt, and Nona Shepphard’s musical adaptation occasionally calls to mind the operatic horror of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.

After a static start, the production evolves into fiery melodrama. Originally staged at west London’s tiny Finborough, it makes good use of Park Theatre’s bigger space. Even if its descent into gothic unpleasantness doesn’t quite convince, and despite the presence of a supposedly sinister stuffed cat that looks like Garfield after a heavy lunch, Shepphard and designer Laura Cordery achieve an air of paranoid claustrophobia.

Julie Atherton plays the title role, at first a drab figure rendered mute by the monotony of life in the modest haberdashery shop where she works. Later she surprises us with her animal energy as she’s consumed with desire for Laurent (brooding Greg Barnett), the childhood friend of her sickly husband Camille (Jeremy Legat). Yet it is the illicit nature of this liaison that makes it exciting, and once Camille ceases to stand in their way the lovers plunge into disgust and insomnia.

Craig Adams’s score has an interestingly fidgety urgency. But Shepphard’s lyrics are prosaic, especially in the passages of exposition assigned to Tara Hugo’s overbearing Madame Raquin (whose favourite word is the twee adjective ‘snuggy’). Still, this is a refreshingly strange and doom-laden musical — passionately performed by a cast of twelve.

Until August 24 (020 7870 6876, parktheatre.co.uk)

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