Theater Review : La Jolla’s ‘Therese Raquin’: Moral Lessons a la Zola

In the 1867 novel “Therese Raquin,” Emile Zola depicted what happens when a swaggering male enters a repressed French household. Therese, a young woman living with her sickly milquetoast husband and his doting mama, has sex with her husband’s friend, the peasant painter Laurent, almost as soon as they are left alone together.

Zola’s clinical descriptions of their insatiable and reckless copulation and the murder it leads them to commit shocked French readers. But scandal only reinforces the fact that we live in a terribly moral universe. In this case, Therese and Laurent are condemned by their consciences to live in a circle of hell horrible enough to satisfy any fire-and-brimstone preacher. In fact, it was the search for any signs of internal punishment that kept most people glued to the TV screen last week, absorbing each clenching of the jaw by the accused O.J. Simpson.

The specter of Simpson, though, is never invoked in playwright Neal Bell’s nevertheless contemporary adaptation now at the La Jolla Playhouse. With the same terrific ensemble simultaneously performing Marivaux’s “Triumph of Love” in repertory at the Mandell Weiss Forum, “Therese Raquin” retains many of the novel’s fascinations, particularly the ones referred to in a warning about “strong language and mature subject matter” at the theater entrance. The on-stage sex of Therese (Angie Phillips) and Laurent (David Hunt), occurring with other characters within earshot, is as frank and voyeuristic as anything Zola attempted.

But there are two problems in this polished production, directed by Michael Greif, who at the end of this season will become the next artistic director at the Playhouse. The play’s first half is gripping--it tells the story of how Therese came to marry Camille (Paul Giamatti) and be wooed by Laurent in the presence of her husband. Halfway through, once the lovers plot and the pivotal event has taken place, the story loses tension. The second half of the play, and the novel for that matter, is undramatic. In fact, Greif works to find a note on which to end the play so the audience knows it is over.

Perhaps to offset this problem, Bell has modernized and brightened up a fairly morbid novel. Particularly for the more active first act, Bell has written short scenes that end with a punch and a black-out. He has also laced the play with a flat, almost cynical humor, so that Madame Raquin (Beth Dixon), Therese’s mother-in-law, has several biting asides that make her sound almost like David Letterman. But Bell pays a price for these liberties.

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Bell has set “Therese Raquin” in a world where it is difficult to understand why the murder would have to be committed, why the heroine and her lover could not simply run off together. The impossibility of divorce is never felt in this world, despite the bustles and corsets that Mark Wendland has designed for a suffocating Therese.

Marina Draghici’s sets, which feature a heavy plastic curtain and suggestions of rooms, grimy shops and riverbanks, hint evocatively at the play’s full setting.

The pleasure of seeing a cast in repertory is to watch a deck reshuffle and see familiar actors play off of one another in new ways. The biggest surprise here is David Hunt, who plays an effete and unworthy love interest to Angie Phillip’s glorious heroine in “Triumph.” As Laurent his lumbering, brutish peasant lust is exactly what would send Therese immediately down on the floor.

Phillips responds provocatively, balancing a mature woman’s sexuality with her musical girl’s voice and uninhibited physicality. As the kind of man who can only inspire his mother to rapturous emotion, Paul Giamatti doesn’t allow Camille to be too pathetic, and gives him a sweet awareness of his considerable shortcomings. As she did in “Triumph,” Dixon pulls off a difficult assignment--she brings dignity and some salty good sense to a woman who should be very easily dismissed as foolish.

The actors in the smaller roles get no chance to play anything beyond a single trait; this is a narrow, internal story that belongs to the three leads. Bell has opened up the claustrophobic atmosphere somewhat by allowing Therese some shocking internal monologues in the middle of a stuffy domino game. Still, no dramatic device can supply tension where none exists. Since there is very little question of the lovers getting caught, the only question is whether they will kill themselves or each other, and oddly or not, that is not very compelling.

No matter how intense, prolonged self-torture is tedious to watch. If we knew for certain that O.J. Simpson was guilty, would we still hang on to every expression?

* “Therese Raquin,” Mandell Weiss Forum at the La Jolla Playhouse, La Jolla, Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Aug. 21. $19-$32. (619) 550-1010. Running time: 1 hours, 50 minutes. Performed in repertory with “The Triumph of Love.”

(Orange County Edition) Angie Phillips: Therese Raquin

David Hunt: Laurent

Paul Giamatti: Camille

Beth Dixon: Madame Raquin

Tony Amendola: Michaud

Silas Weir Mitchell: Olivier

Laurie Williams: Suzanne

Kent Davis: Grivet

A La Jolla Playhouse production. Adapted by Neal Bell from the novel by Emile Zola. Directed by Michael Greif. Costumes by Mark Wendland. Sets by Marina Draghici. Lights by Kenneth Posner. Sound by Nathan Birnbaum. Stage manager Kimberly Fisk.