Bovary

A game of jubilant oratorical jousting

Gustave Flaubert's 1856 trial for "offenses against morality and religion" serves as the starting point for this adaptation. The director of Lisbon's National Theater, Tiago Rodrigues, summons the scandalous Emma Bovary, her husband, her lovers, Flaubert, the prosecution and the defense, and gives them flesh and soul.
Interweaving minutes of the hearings, the writer's correspondence and passages from the novel, the play freely blends reality and fiction. Grappling with her frustrations and desires, Flaubert's heroine sends bien-pensance into a tailspin. However, behind the portrait of this free woman, Tiago Rodrigues, the prodigal son of European theater, denounces all forms of censorship that torment the minds of authors from Flaubert to himself. On stage, five actors and actresses embody all the characters in the novel for impassioned oratory games, much to the delight of lovers of rhetoric and eloquence.