Breakfast with Emma

Extra-marital passion always ends in tears, non? 'Breakfast with Emma' is novelist Fay Weldon's stage adaptation of Flaubert's classic novel 'Madame Bovary'. The breakfast in question doesn't appear in the novel, but is an imagined final confrontation between Mr and Mme B which allows Weldon to recap the major plot points as their row escalates toward its fatal denouement. With a text that revels in flashback, director Helen Tennison has wisely adopted a playful, fluid approach to the staging: incidental characters emerge from cupboards, out of the fireplace and even from under the floorboards. It's not entirely original, but it's nicely done and sensitively deployed. The pace is galloping and the cast do a good job – Fliss Walton's Emma B is every inch the bosomy, lust-driven pre-Raphaelite, while James Burton's Charles Bovary gives good bluster – but they're up against an often clunky expository script.