Reviews for Mill on the Floss 

Play by George Eliot adapted by Helen Edmundson. Directed by Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale. Presented by the Shared Experience Theatre Company.

Wild and clever, Maggie Tulliver struggles with Victorian society's stifling conventions. Denied the opportunities offered to her adored brother Tom, she desperately tries to reconcile her thirst for knowledge with her family's expectations.

But then Maggie meets a passionate man who loves her for her wit, intelligence and sensuality, and her true nature threatens to erupt...

Shared Experience  are renowned world over for breaking boundaries and creating highly charged physical performances including the critically acclaimed Jane Eyre, Mother Courage and Her Children, A Doll's House, The House of Bernarda Alba and Anna Karenina.

Mill on the Floss

New Ambassadors Theatre  

****

Lyn Gardner
Friday April 6, 2001
The Guardian

It begins with the ducking of a witch and ends with a flood; in between you will be swept away by Shared Experience's adaptation of George Eliot's novel. First produced by the company in 1994, Helen Edmundson's version of the story has taken a long time to reach the West End but it undoubtedly deserves its berth. It is devastatingly good.

The great trick of the adaptation is that it never settles for the bare bones of narrative: it always gives you the emotional tenor of the story and always expresses the themes. Adapting from page to stage is almost always perceived as a second-rate art, but here it is elevated to something that is both true to the original novel and transcends it. But to talk about its being faithful is irrelevant - it is also completely of itself. When I first saw this production some years ago I had never read the novel but, as a result, I rushed out and bought it. Now I know the book intimately, but the stage version is as thrilling as ever.

The vision is so complete that it is impossible to say where Edmundson's contribution ends and that of directors Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale begins. At its heart are the three Maggies, played by three actresses: First Maggie is the impetuous, wayward child, maybe her very soul; Second Maggie is the young woman who tries to suppress her nature so she can bow to the wishes of her domineering brother Tom; Third Maggie is the mature woman caught between the two as she struggles to reconcile her love for her cousin's beloved, Stephen Guest, with her need to do the right thing. Some of the best moments come when the struggle between the Maggies is most obvious. There is a lovely scene when Third Maggie is confronted by the knowledge of her love for Stephen while First Maggie creeps slyly around the edge of the piano, leading her on into dangerous waters.

This is a dazzlingly acted production, where the boundaries between text and physicality become blurred as feelings are evoked with a swing on a rope or a sudden frozen image. In the rising floodwaters you don't just see but experience every mixed emotion of a woman trapped and doomed by the expectations of a society suspicious of an intelligent woman who thinks and feels too much for her own good.