More than 150 years after it was written, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary defies simple classification. Tragedy, satire, comedy and historical allegory all abound in Northwestern’s latest adaptation of the classic French novel.
The excitement of romance and the despair of betrayal come alive in the story of Emma Bovary, a free spirit who dreams of romance, and follows lust, in order to escape boredom. Director and Communication Prof. Paul Edwards, who adapted the play from English translations of Flaubert’s novel, says that although the primary purpose of the show is to present the story of one woman’s life, some dramatists have also taken Emma as an emblem of a dying revolutionary vigor.
“One theory is that 1848 – a revolutionary year in France and across Europe – was the climax and death of a certain kind of romantic spirit,” Edwards says. “These elaborate theories see the reckless revolutionary spirit dying in Emma’s death.”
The dialogue and story remain true to Flaubert’s novel, with French phrases and references to the Rouen, Paris and carriage rides, but all aesthetic elements – costumes, the set, music – draw on 1960s America rather than 1840s France. Edwards says the two time periods share a common upheaval, turbulence and sense of a romantic revolution pursued and, in some ways, unfulfilled.
“In 1968, a social revolution came together – a turn against bourgeois conformity,” Edwards says. “But the 1970s found us back toward a new consumerism and materialism. In some ways, 1968 came and went for us the same way as 1848 did for the French.”
Edwards had the actors in the current production read Flaubert’s novel to gain a fuller appreciation for the story. The depth of context behind the stage story helped them delve further into their characters.
“Their instincts have constantly surprised me,” Edwards says. “They find things I never suspected.”
Music plays an important role in telling the story, and while the show begins with music from British pop bands of the early 1960s, it progresses to the darker, more spastic rock guitar riffs of Jimi Hendrix and vocals of Janis Joplin, providing a context that augments Emma’s spiraling fall into hopelessness in the play’s climax.
The play unfolds inside an impressive three-story set that designer Meghan Raham says she created to mirror the image of a child’s dollhouse. The bland, washed out colors and maroon flower prints of the house’s wallpaper “accentuate the overwhelming domesticity” remaining from the 1950s, an inescapable trap that strangles Emma’s yearn for freedom and adventure.
“The set has done something amazing,” says Weinberg junior Lee Stark, who portrays Emma Bovary. Stark says the set serves as a metaphor for Emma’s helplessness. “It’s so confining, with no way out,” she says.
Madame Bovary opens with Emma seated at the second-story balcony of a four-story house, pantomiming playing the piano. The audience then meets Charles, a skinny social outcast, ridiculed by his peers and trapped into marriage with an elderly woman by his parents. When his own wife dies, he is promised the hand of the much younger and more attractive Emma. The first act proceeds slowly and mostly hopefully, but the fits of anxiety, worry, angst and the rapid progression of Act Two leave the audience feeling empty. Emma’s sense of self-worth plummets and Charles, oblivious to her infidelities, tries to think of ways to keep his wife happy.
Emma endures the abuse and betrayal of her lovers in several affairs and, by the time she sits down at the piano again in Act Two, the degeneration in her musical abilities reflects her loss of innocence. Conversely, the renewal of an affair becomes a metaphor for the excitement that she seems to find only in infidelity. Incapable of love for her husband, or even for her young daughter, Emma is ultimately unable to love or respect herself and finds death as the only escape.
The ensemble provides sophistication and creativity that supports the two leads. The revolving door of characters – every actor other than those playing Emma and Charles plays at least two parts, and some as many as five – adds to the swirling chaos that forms the emotional vacuum into which Emma falls.
Clocking in at nearly three hours, the play may seem to drag at times, but even in its current manifestation, Edwards says Madame Bovary only captures part of Flaubert’s novel. Edwards has mounted two previous productions of Madame Bovary; his 1987 production, which formed the basis for the current production’s script, remained so true to the length of the text that it had to be presented over three separate evenings.
Madame Bovary is surprisingly fresh and relevant. As disconcerting as it may be to leave the theater lamenting the emptiness of Emma Bovary’s missed potential and desires still unmet, the emotional sincerity brought to Flaubert’s work by its cast and director are worth the ride.
Madame Bovary is going up at the Josephine Louis Theater, 20 Arts Circle Dr., Jan. 27-28 and Feb. 1-4 at 8 p.m.; Jan. 29 and Feb. 5 at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $10 for students, $22 for senior citizens and NU faculty and staff and $25 for the general public.
Medill senior Eric Martin is a PLAY writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
