London Theatre - Therese Raquin

Last Monday, I went to the London National Theatre on the South Bank to see Therese Raquin by Emile Zola. The French play was translated into English, but my main interest in seeing it is that I started (key word) to read it in French last spring with my Alliance Francaise class in San Francisco. Having not even read half of it, I thought this would be a good way to tick the box on another London Theatre night out, understand the story, and, just maybe, it would inspire me to read the entire play in French.

I went with a friend I met travelling in Ljubljana to celebrate her birthday since I couldn’t attend her party this Saturday (see next post - I was going to Madrid!). She had studied Therese Raquin for her French A-levels but had never seen it performed either. We met for dinner at a casual restaurant Giraffe on the South Bank, and we ended up missing the first 20 minutes because we both misinterpreted the start time. (All start times were 7:30pm 'unless otherwise noted'; our night said Press Night 7:00pm but we both assumed that meant that there was something special for press people at 7:00pm and the play would still start at 7:30pm. We obviously don't go to the theatre enough, but lesson learned).

I managed to enter the play at about the moment I had read up to. There were empty seats mid-balcony so we were able to see better than our assigned second-to-last-row seats would have let us, and we ended up saving £10 per ticket by purchasing the 'cheap seats'. The play was excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed it (much more than struggling through the French text) and now I may even read it again. We'll see if the book makes the cut on my packing at Christmas. What a great start to the week!