The Oyster Problem review – the struggle to save Flaubert from himself

Fizzing facts … Left to right: Giles Taylor as Turgenev, Bob Barrett as Flaubert, Norma Atallah as George Sand, Rosalind Lailey as Caroline Commanville and Peter Hannah as Zola in The Oyster Problem. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

While researching his book, The Europeans, Orlando Figes fell for the famous writers that populated his expansive work on 19th-century Europe. Turgenev was at the heart of The Europeans, but Flaubert is the focus of Figes’ very first play. With the great French writer’s life and money draining away, Turgenev, Zola and George Sand run increasingly desperate circles round their stubbornly romantic (and oyster-loving) friend, doomed to die for his art. It’s a sort of dream dinner party setup – only a lot of it is true.

Bob Barrett as Flaubert in The Oyster Problem by Orlando Figes. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian