Quantum Theatre plays in the pool with Zola

“Therese Raquin”

Quantum Theatre

Runs through Oct. 14

8 p.m….

“Therese Raquin”

Quantum Theatre

Runs through Oct. 14

8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday

Tickets: $25-$30, limited student tickets available at $15

412-697-2929

As summer ends, many pools are closing up. Not all will remain static, however – Quantum Theatre has begun running Nicholas Wright’s interpretation of Emile Zola’s classic play “Therese Raquin” in the Braddock Carnegie Library’s drained swimming pool. The show, which premiered last Friday and will run through Oct. 14.

As for why a drained swimming pool is the setting of the production, artistic director Karla Boos explains, “We’d been in Braddock library doing ‘Mrs. Rochester’ in the music hall. We found this empty, unused swimming pool in the basement, so that wonderful space was also in the back of my mind. Therese Raquin is all about a group of people who are really refined, trapped together,” Boos says.

Starring Robin Walsh (as Therese Raquin), Hugo Armstrong, and Mary Rawson, the play is the story of a painter, his lover and her mother-in-law. Quantum Theater describes the characters as “play(ing) a claustrophobic game of self-destructive desire” in a “classic tale of passion and betrayal.”

Boos says of the setting that, “it would