Thérèse Raquin - The Little, Southwark Playhouse

So, if you think you're too sophisticated to be genuinely shocked at the theatre, think again. This production in the Southwark Playhouse's Little Theatre gives Zola's 19th century melodrama the full Grand Guignol treatment to quite stunning effect. The final fifteen or so minutes left me reeling - it's definitely not for the faint of heart.

Yes, at two hours fifty minutes it's too long and too slow in the first act - they really need to pick up the pace in those domino party scenes - but the rewards are many including a deep investment in the characters, all wonderfully delineated by a cast of six young actors who are uniformly superb. One hesitates to pick out individual performances but the two leads, Lily Knight as the repressed Therese and Matthew Hopkinson as her hot-blooded lover, Laurent, are just sensationally good at riding the transformations they both undergo and endure as their characters descend into the pit of guilt and madness.

One puzzling thing - there is no credit given for the adaptation being used. And it is a very good adaptation, in some ways quite different - and, frankly, better - than Zola's original novel. Therese herself, for instance, is much less the instigator Zola portrayed and much more a victim swept along by events. To me this is a more effective take. And there are many structural niceties, props planted in the beginning that pay off in the end, motifs cunningly scattered throughout. The violence of the piece has been ramped up and given an almost cinematic twenty-first century makeover. The result is a very fine play. One would love to know who wrote it.

But, that aside, this is a real achievement for all concerned. There was a pretty full house in the small Southwark space and there was a boisterous standing ovation at the end. It only has one more week to run.

Well. This is a bit of a hot mess.

It's like a 70's Hammer adaptation of 'Therese Raquin'. Throw the book away and be prepared for Madame to be turned into a comedy sister straight out of 'Cranford' for the first act and then in the second a wheelchair bound Rita Fairclough at her hammiest. Be prepared for Laurent to go from lustful artist with a manbun and a Kit Harington obsession into psychotic, murderous bully at the flick of a switch. Be prepared for Camille to give you more camp than a whole series of 'Are You Being Served?' (actually to be fair, Sam Goodchild is rather fabulous as Camille playing up the foppy gayness to show why the marriage is so loveless). Be prepared for Freddie Greaves as Michaud to waltz in and steal the entire thing from under the rest of the cast with a performance worthy of Kenneth Williams himself and more eye rolling than Maggie Smith in an entire series of 'Downton Abbey'. But most of all (and most unforgivable of all), be prepared for Therese Raquin to be turned into a wet, whiny, simpering, whimpering, irritating, pathetic victim of a character. Heaven knows what Laurent sees in this Therese to want to bump off her husband. I was half hoping he'd change his mind and do away with her instead, I was fairly tempted myself. By the second half there's so much shouting that I was hoping the ushers would walk around passing out the paracetamol.

On the plus side, the set is suitably grimy and the boat trip is very well done, Sam Goodchild and Freddie Greaves deserve a show of their own and there is a particularly fabulous nightmare sequence in the second act that really does make you jump. And jump again.