# RSC adaptation finds emotional depth in Middlemarch’s marital struggles

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/middlemarch-review-worlds-greatest-novel-hurtles-from-costume-drama-to-jolting-marital-tragedy/
- Published: 2026-10-29T16:40:40+00:00
- Updated: 2026-10-29T17:33:55+00:00
- Original publisher: The Guardian (publisher lean: Left)
- Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/oct/29/middlemarch-review-swan-theatre-stratford-upon-avon-worlds-greatest-novel-george-eliot
- Topics: Culture, Elections, Politics, UK, World

## Key points

- The RSC stages *Middlemarch* in a nearly six-hour adaptation.
- The production’s emotional centre is Dorothea’s difficult marriage to Casaubon.
- George Eliot appears as a character to help tell the story.

## Summary

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s two-part staging of George Eliot’s *Middlemarch* brings the novel’s provincial marriages, money troubles and social ambitions to the stage, with humour and compassion. The production initially favours pace and plot over the book’s psychological depth, but finds greater emotional force in the strained marriage between Dorothea and the older scholar Casaubon.

Nina Raine’s adaptation runs for almost six hours, including intervals, and retains many of Eliot’s lines while turning the omniscient narrator into Eliot herself, played by Amanda Root. The review praises the design and Ian Drysdale’s Casaubon, while noting that some characters feel thin and that comic scenes can verge on pantomime.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.