The Oyster Problem review

In this debut play by historian and writer Orlando Figes, 19th-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert is plagued by the same issue that plagues countless successful authors: he can’t get out from under the shadow of his first book, Madame Bovary. A perfectionist unable to write, he rails against the “bourgeois” obsession with money, while sliding into bankruptcy and ill-health, to the worry of his friends.

This piece originates in Figes’ research for his cultural history The Europeans, which focused on Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. Figes uses letters written by Turgenev, Flaubert and other literary luminaries of his age – Emile Zola and George Sand – to put their friendship on stage (with Flaubert at the centre), while tackling enduring issues of art versus commerce.

Via a series of boozy get-togethers in a restaurant and Flaubert’s homes, Figes uses the four writers as a lens on the differing cultural attitudes of their time. Flaubert insists on the purity of art. Zola argues that you have to play the publicity game if you want to reach readers. Turgenev is wistful for the romance of writing. Sand – the pen-name of female author Amantine de Francueil – calls them out for their pretentiousness and leery misogyny.

If this description sounds reductive, it’s because that is how it often comes across. Director Philip Wilson introduces some lightness, while designer Isabella van Braeckel’s versatile set convincingly conjures the private rooms in which these public figures debate their art. Nevertheless, the weight of exposition – often a problem with biographical dramas – seems to pin the characters to their chairs. Their lengthy debates, while sometimes interesting, result in a growing sense of dramatic inertia, as they stubbornly remain mouthpieces for ideas, rather than real people.

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