Double Indemnité: Thérèse Raquin at BU

Thérèse Raquin has been adapted for the stage before—by Emile Zola himself, and by Harry Connick, Jr., among many others—but the opera being performed at the Boston University Theatre* feels like a movie. Domino players' arms are choreographed like stop-motion puppets and, all around them, the meticulous grime and uncanny colors look post-production. Tobias Picker's displaced film noir score is lush, often frantic, and always on the verge of shrieking—and when it finally does, at the murderous close of the first act, it never quite stops.

This is a cautionary tale for potential murderesses: you can fool the law, but you can't escape atonality.

Gene Scheer's brisk libretto is in English, so the usual supertitles are eschewed but occasionally missed, as when language gets tangled in a tipsy, contrapuntal Thursday night septet. The action moves along at what feels like real time, even when it wallows in an aria, and the second act furnishes forth some lovely moments, with mezzo-soprano Julia Mintzer in particular. Thérèse wants for a "faithful dove" to guide her out of the flood, and Mintzer calls for it like a woman who has never seen dry land. Singing about a more literal body of water, her cuckolded-and-drowned husband (tenor James Barbato) is more compelling dead.

He drags his soggy ghost back onto the same askew platform where his "boating accident" was mimed—the set is, give or take a few chains and Tim-Burtonly bric a brac, immovable and unchanging. Exposed brick above, a bottomless pit below, and bracketed by gilt splinters of a titanic rococo picture frame, Paul Tate dePoo III's splendid scenic design gives the impression of a frozen world, rusting in free fall.

As the psychologically-harrowing plot moves towards to its physically brutal end, Mintzer and her baritone accomplice (Jonathan Cole) convey burgeoning disgust for each other, palpably, like zombies suddenly realizing they're eating brains. Thérèse Raquin is work that demands a lot, vocally and otherwise, and the young, energetic cast pays up handsomely.

*One last time, today at 2 o'clock, and worth your afternoon (and $20).