A sense of surprise is lacking throughout, the wordplay is laboured and the physical comedy feels sloppy, so their knowing glances are unearned. Alistair Cope is particularly malleable as a pharmacist turned nun turned sparklingly stroppy cow.īut there is a flatness to the script that robs it of full-bodied comedy. The other three rotate around her, running on and off the stage in an assortment of waistcoats and hats to sort one role from another. Kirby is proud and exasperated as Emma, always needing something more. The cast work hard with what they’re given. Outside the bizarre framing device of two rat-catchers, here to use up all the arsenic before Madame Bovary can get to it, the majority of the show is little more than a sped-up run through the plot: Emma (Jennifer Kirby) is reluctantly married to the sweet and gormless Charles (Sam Alexander), but eternally trying to escape her current situation by sleeping with any handsome man who crosses her path (all played by Dennis Herdman). Nudges towards playfulness aren’t pushed far enough, nor are the dramaturgical attempts to grapple with the story’s tragic ending.

Marieke Audsley’s production lacks confidence. The set is hand-drawn in a cartoonish style, the cast speak directly to us and they break character to consider whether anyone in the audience has actually read the book. John Nicholson’s play reaches for the opposite, valiantly trying to mine humour from this desperately sad story. Flaubert’s novel of a French countryside doctor and his freedom-seeking wife was touted as a masterpiece of realism.

Bovary madame