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A tremendously fun and clever romp through one of the “best novels ever written” while maintaining the story structure and message of the original.Summary
Rating
Unmissable!
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is one of my favourite novels. I have it on my list as the book I would take to a desert island along with my eight records. It has long been hailed as “perfect” and “the best novel ever written”. So what would I make of John Nicholson’s adaptation? Nicholson uses a brilliant framing device of two ratcatchers (originally used for a Radio 4 series that derailed well-known novels) to allow Madame Bovary to tell her own story. And what a story it is.
When Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary in 1857, literature was moving from Romanticism to Realism and the novel spares us nothing of the detailed realism of her life. Interestingly, in its own way, neither does the adaptation: while laughing, we feel her pain and her longing. As a wife, Emma is a nightmare, living beyond her means, permanently unhappy and unfulfilled and looking for a romantic life that she reads about but that doesn’t exist. Married to the local doctor whose bovine ways bore her, she seeks thrills and excitement wherever she can. Not even pregnancy stops her thinking she can run away with a would-be lover. Gradually her life starts to unravel. She brings about her husband’s professional and social downfall when she encourages him to undertake unnecessary surgery on a villager’s club foot that results in an amputation. Emma borrows money and buys extravagant linens and goods on credit that eventually sees the Bovarys about to lose their home. All the while, Emma is indulging in extra marital affairs that are often purely physical and unsustainable.
How, you might ask yourself, can this be in any way be funny? The success of The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary is in the skill of the four amazing actors. Georgia Nicholson plays Emma Bovary and Madame Codoux; Darren Seed is Charles Bovary, Ratman 2 and also Mother Superior; Ben Kernow is not onlyLeon but Ratman 1, Rodolphe, Raouault, Dr. Cavinet, and a Viscount; Stephen Cavanagh portrays the Blind man, Bailiff, Marchioness, Homais, Sister Mary, Farm Hand, Footman, Hippolyte, Justin, Lheureux, Girard, Beadie, Cure, Charles’ mother and Mayor Tuvache! And breathe… You can tell by the number of characters they each play the speed and skills required to rapidly change roles, which they do with great success. Each character is believable, has its own identity and drives the plot along.
Special mention must go to Simon Hutchings and Dan Bottomley for the lighting and sound design. The sound effects are so integral to the production they are like an extra character in the play. Detailed choreography by Grace Murdoch means that the interplay of the cast and the sound effects is so precise as to be a work of art in itself. The show is funny and clever from the absolute beginning, regularly breaking the fourth wall and drawing the audience into a crazy world.
However, there is a serious aspect to Madame Bovary that this adaptation remains faithful to. They could, as is said in the play, have made the ending a cheerful one, with everyone living happily ever after. But (spoiler alert) in the novel Emma takes her own life, driven to despair by the situation she has brought upon herself. The play acknowledges this, giving voice to what is indeed a massive tragedy that is probably played out to this day. Not wanting to send us out into the cold night with a suicide, the story concludes with what might have been the ending had Emma’s life been different, and we all lived happily ever after. The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary is a Massive Success.
Adapted by: John Nicholson
Directed by: Kirstie Davis
Produced by: Ben Kernow & Zoë Curnow
Lighting Design by: Simon Hutchings
Composer and Sound Design by: Dan Bottomley
Choreography by: Grace Murdoch
The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary plays at Southwark Playhouse, Borough until Saturday 11 January 2025. Further information and booking details can be found here.
