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Therese Raquin
NORTHERN LIGHTS The Chance opens two ambitious, serious works on the same weekend, two deep psychological dramas of rare intensity in drastically different styles. The main feature, Therese Raquin, is Neal Bell's adaptation of French writer Emile Zola's classic of the same name, directed by Darryl Hovis. The script closely follows the novel, through a series of swift, intense tableaux chronicling Therese's life from late adolescence til death. The setting is the stifling Raquin household, where Therese has been raised by the indomitable Madame, a widow with a sickly son, Camille. Therese is a modern woman before her time, but has to resign herself to a loveless marriage to Camille, if only out of gratefulness for the roof given to her. Her Father was Madame's brother, who sired her under shady circumstances. The Raquins move from the countryside to a dingy Paris shop, and Therese's life settles in the stale environment, the only change with marriage being that she turned left at the top of the stairs into the conjugal bed instead of right to her girl's room. Camille is a mild and meak young man unable to satisfy Therese's passionate yearnings. He revulses her while she submits to his clumsy attentions. Evenings at the Raquins are a regular ritual of dominoe games with a coterie of harmless acquain-tances who dispense mindless conversation often revolving around the murders and morgue work activities of Michaud and Olivier, respectively a police inspector and doctor. Enter galant Laurent, a childhood friend of the family who has lived a dissolute life in bohemian circles, where he combines a small artistic talent with his lust for women with the live models he beds down after his voyeuristic rapes. Therese is seduced, and the two begin a dangerous liaison while Madame tends the shop downstairs and Camille toils on books at the office. The very illegitimacy and risk add spice to the affair, which culminates with a delicious scene with Laurent under Therese's skirts as Madame massages her shoulders to ease a purported migraine. Before long the two lovers hatch a plot to eliminate Camille and the plan is flawlessly staged as a boating accident. After a suitable mourning period, the obvious is planted in Madame's entourage's mind: Laurent must marry Therese and live with them, her new children. Unfortunately, the specter of the drowned man's cadaver haunts the guilty pair who can find no solace in their corrupted passion. Camille is a cold presence between them like a knife. Eventually, the two hate each other as passionately as they had loved, and reveal their heinous secret to a stroke stricken Madame who rolls silent, powerless tears. In a final twist, Madame wins as Therese and Laurent commit a double murder suicide pact to relieve themselves of their living hell, with utmost disregard to the two helpless lives of Madame in her wheelchair by the water's edge and Therese's fetus. Liz Simmons gives full measure to Therese, a victim of her own unquelshed desires as well as the circumstances which hold her prisoner to a living death before and after both marriages. Were Zola to have lived a century later, the drama could not have been written as the obvious answer is the simple concept of divorce, or even non-marriage, two choices unavailable to most women until the second half of the last century. Halim Jabbour brings all the necessary bravado to his blatant sexuality, himself the prisoner of Therese's guile. Keith Patterson is the more credible as pathetic Camille as such wet-rag roles are difficult to imbue with depth. He is at his most powerful in his reincarnation as the rotting corpse's ghost who wedges himself in his murderers' psyche as a palpable presence. Eugenia Care has the necessary girth to substantiate Madame Raquin as the undisputed head of the household who holds both Therese and Camille in her iron vise. The rest of the cast provide the cameo roles for the society at the Raquins' dinner table with their vapid interactions in the face of the rabid ravings of Therese's inner voice. Omar Inguanzo's music intelligently supports the gripping drama set against the surreal backdrop of blind windows and transparent walls Therese can only escape by her morbid fascination with the river flow which taunts her to liberate herself. Therese Raquin may be a relatively obscure name
for the American public, but is promised to enjoy a revival in the limelight
with several upcoming stage and movie productions in the months to come.
This is a most timely adaptation of the original and a stunning introduction
to this classic masterpiece.
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WALLFOUR.COM As my first experience with this play, I must say that I found the Chance Theater’s production of Therese Raquin, both surprising and profoundly rewarding. Therese Raquin is set in France in the 19th Century, a story that appears to be more about lust than love, yet most sharply takes stabs at themes of dependence, betrayal, and mental imprisonment. A large part of the eight-person cast is made up of a tight-knit domino throwing dinner party. Sound exciting enough for two hours? Well, it is. On the fringe of the party is the title character, Therese Raquin (Liz Simmons), sitting completely detached in her own private world. Because Simmons’ performance appears so unforced, the character of Therese is able to invite the audience into her private world, the one away from the others with whom she shares the stage, with such delicacy that it never suggests that she is asking for our pity, and therefore does not compromise her own strength of character. The director, Darryl B. Hovis, deserves a lot of credit in his staging of this play. The subtlety of both audio and lighting techniques create such a soothing effect throughout the production, that it really sets the stage for the resigned despair of Therese. Hovis, however, does not leave the audience with the bleak picture that I have painted thus far. Through the painter character of Laurent (Halim Jabbour) the plot gets thrown into a turmoil sparked by lust and need to free oneself from all restraint. Jabbour’s performance breathes life onto the stage the moment he first enters. The strength of his language and expression makes his character the most charismatic to follow across the stage. Yet the gigolo type that is the character of Laurent is not all that Jabbour is confined to. As his character develops, he too is struck by internal conflict—fear, regret, sadness and anger—and he pours them out in such a defined and quick manner that if he was not marooned in the 19th Century, he would surely have a lithium prescription. Camille was played by Keith Patterson, the sickly husband of Therese. Camille seemed to have more energy and life than the ailments afflicting him would have permitted... That aside, at the end of the first act, the trusting, good natured character he is able to bring forth produces such feelings of pity, that the issue of victimization truly unfolds itself into ambiguity. Eugnia I. Care plays the role of Madame, who is the Aunt of Therese and mother of Camille. The character of Madame in the first act seemed to portray the necessary wall to fence in the character of Therese, but she really comes to life in the second act, in an oddly paralyzing manner. Much of the first act runs like a montage. This is used to establish the background of the sickly and monotonous life that Therese has been chained to. However, with all of the lights-on, lights-off, lights-on, lights-off, I found myself getting impatient with the progress of the story, and found myself thinking that if there were curtains that fell each scene, it would go up and down more times than during the bows at a ballet. Furthermore, I was distracted by the fact that when the lights went down so characters could enter or exit, change positions, or move furniture, Therese was still in character, poised with the glow of the moonlight still upon her face. At times this montage moves on and off the play of the silent game of dominos at the table. It often looked like a game that none of the players were enjoying, yet they continued to return to it scene after scene. This feeling of humdrum was broken by the character of Suzanna (LaRee Freeman) whose drunken laughter was clearly contagious in the audience, as well as by the character of Grivet (Jeff Hellebrand) who succeeds in comedic part of a man who is overly self-assured. Profoundly rewarding? I said that in my first sentence. And still mean it. Wait for the end. That is all I can say. This is a production that does not apologize. The opportunity (especially in Orange County) to see a show that is not looking for the perfect bow to tie up any loose ends is a great reward that should not be over looked. It is this factor that makes this production great, and will leave you feeling mixed about what redemption is, who is the judge of it, or whether it exists at all. If all of that was not enough to get you to see this
show, then go see it for the sex....we're not talking undertones.
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ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER We more or less take it for granted that female characters in fiction - whether in literature, film, television or the stage - will be as complex psychologically as males. But there was a point in literature before which this was largely untrue. The French 19th-century novelist Emile Zola essentially demarcated the dividing line with his first major novel, "Thérèse Raquin." From its 1867 publication onward, "Thérèse Raquin" was both championed and vilified across Europe for its gritty realism and sexual honesty. A psychological thriller, the novel has a distinctly mesmerizing quality. Most crucially, its focal figure is Thérèse, a lustful yet strangely morbid young woman driven by animalistic desires, yet burdened with a conflicted psyche. While an earlier script brought this groundbreaking work to the stage, Neal Bell provided the world of theater with a newer and more incisive version adapted directly from the novel. Bell's text got its West Coast premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in July 1994. Now, The Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills has put up an entirely new staging directed by Darryl B. Hovis - one that capitalizes on the psychological aspects so expertly emphasized by Bell's script. The story begins innocently enough. As children, Thérèse (Liz Simmons) lusts after her frail cousin, Camille (Keith Patterson), who only merely enjoys her company. As young adults, the pair become engaged - but the sickly Camille spends most of his time confined to bed. Thérèse is at first repulsed by Camille's strapping artist buddy, Laurent (Halim Jabbour), but animal magnetism soon draws the two together. The results of their actions and decisions have the same tone and tenor of many an Alfred Hitchcock film - no coincidence, considering Hitchcock's admitted indebtedness to the Romantic literature of the 19th century. Zola spins many of the same themes later tapped by Hitchcock, and the macabre tone cast over the play by Thérèse's morbid sensibilities is equally reminiscent of the great British film director. The Chance staging reunites the production team that worked earlier this year on the troupe's world premiere of "The Angelina Project": director Hovis, set designer Will Pellegrini, sound designer Omar Inguanzo and lighting designer Robert G. Davis. Pellegrini places abstract-looking window frames at odd angles in the theater's side walls, and uses the color blood red throughout, from seat cushions to the fabrics draped across the walls. Molly Dewane's accurate period costumes - somehow both simple and ornate - reflect this scheme, while Christine Martin's living corpse makeup is chillingly effective. As Thérèse, Simmons is isolated from the other characters to illustrate her contempt for the complacency of the bourgeoisie - a technique accentuated by Davis' lighting of her. The powerfully stark, spare nature of Zola's material is punched across by Hovis' skillful use of Romantic classical music - the moodiness of a Debussy work for string quartet perfectly fits what we're watching unfold on stage. The production seamlessly meshes Zola's themes with Bell's reworking, which makes the story and its characters more accessible to contemporary audiences. To show her contempt for her family and society, Thérèse copulates with Laurent in the back room of the store owned by her bourgeois, sentimental aunt (Eugenia Care), who is known only as "Madame." The story's combination of carnality and morbidity is pungent and almost nausea inducing: Thérèse enjoys the pleasures of Laurent's body, but even in the early scenes, you know she can never be happy. She's a young woman with a diseased old soul. Bell uses language to push across the earthy sensuality of the subtext in a way that's almost overwhelming. We're bombarded with talk of morgues, rotting corpses, strokes, and flesh wounds that burn. Characters describe odors in no uncertain terms - their nostrils burn with the smell of cholic, from Camille's nightshirt; or turpentine, from Laurent's studio; or the dirt of a funeral plot. The scent of the Seine River is the only one that's welcome. Like the 20th-century existentialists who would follow him, Zola speaks in no uncertain terms about living death: It's literal after Madame's paralyzing stroke - but figuratively, Thérèse's existence is also a living death. Placed upstage, seated in a chair, she looks small and alone, an outsider cognizant of life's incongruities. All she can do to keep from losing her mind is laugh - a brief expulsion that's chilling coming from the pale, expressionless Simmons. It's hard to imagine this staging without Simmons. Her Thérèse is, at first, pugnacious, yet morose; her appetite for Laurent is ravenous, but sex brings only brief respite from her pervasive gloom. By keeping her movements and words calm and understated, Simmons invites our sympathy for Thérèse, letting us in on her disturbed take on life. Given the narrow range of the character's emotions, she does a wonderful job of sustaining audience interest in Thérèse, expertly balancing the young woman's contempt for others with her uncertainty about her own state of mind. Jabbour is a virile and sensual yet tactful Laurent, physically powerful yet gentle. Patterson is a sympathetic Camille, the enervated, clueless young man who early on remarks that he's "tired of sleeping," yet is put permanently to sleep by his new bride and her lover. Bob Campbell, Robert G. Davis, LaRee Freeman and Jeff Hellebrand are Madame's various friends, whom we view through Thérèse's tormented eyes - like figures in a wax museum, moving in slow motion whenever she's around. Try as she might, she cannot get them to recognize
that life is nothing but a cosmic joke played on us all, that their daily
concerns are petty, and that food, drink and sex are the only means, however
temporary, of staving off insanity.
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