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Fay
Weldon's adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary departs
from the novel in that here, Emma Bovary's husband does not remain
ignorant of her actions.
This
Shared Experience production is acted out at a breakfast table where
bit-by-bit, Emma confesses her infidelities to shocked husband Charles.
With
what seems to be almost sadistic pleasure, and while blaming her
village doctor spouse for not being able to satisfy her need for
glamour and riches, she details her betrayals.
Her
heartbroken husband begs her to stop one moment, only to urge her
to continue the next.
As
Emma tortures Charles with details of her affairs, their different
morals and outlooks on life become painfully clear. When he - scarcely
able to believe his ears - asks, disgusted: "In a carriage? Like
a whore?!" she corrects him with a longing smile: "Like a woman
in love!"
Although
the set remains the same breakfast table throughout the play, Liz
Ranken's delightful choreography allows the actors to take the audience
along to Emma's affairs - at the opera, in a carriage, on a horseback
outing.
Emma
is manipulative, self-pitying, and annoyingly self-absorbed. Played
by Amanda Drew, she gradually explains to her husband how she has
made him the laughing stock of the village and in doing so has also
run up debts that will ruin him.
Theatrical
Emma never stops threatening to kill herself and describing how
the arsenic she has hidden away will take her out of this life.
Adrian
Schiller's Charles, having heard the threats a million times, mechanically
begs her not to. As he grasps the full extent of her actions, he
no longer tries to stop her.
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