Jenny Enarsson became intoxicated in the 19th Century love story, Camille.

Echoed in the recent hit film, Moulin Rouge, it was a shockingly frank and powerfully emotional portrayal of a woman's life.

By Jenny Enarsson

Armand has loved Marguerite Gautier since the first moment he saw her. She, the most reputed prostitute in mid-nineteenth century Paris, has never been in love.

When he reveals his feelings to her she laughs it off, asking "And what should I do with this great love of yours?". He answers, "Love me back."

Slowly but surely he gets under her skin against all odds, and that is when the true torment begins.

Marguerite suffers from tuberculosis and knows that she will die very soon.

Proud, strong and acutely aware of who she is, she takes on the new and unfamiliar feeling that is love as uncompromisingly as she does everything else in life. But things are not as easy as that.

While a business transaction between prostitute and client is perfectly normal in Parisian high society, true love between a decent man and a fallen woman is completely unacceptable.

In this cruel community, people fall in and out of favour overnight and friends appear and disappear accordingly.

As Marguerite begins to succumb to her disease, it becomes clear that she has, in her own words, a past that won't allow her to have a future.

Daniela Nardini is brilliant as Marguerite and conveys her self-destructive energy in a way reminiscent of Anna, the character Nardini played in This Life.

Elliot Cowan gives a great performance as the intense and temperamental Armand, and Beverly Klein is highly annoying as the shameless, flattering and opportunistic Prudence.

Background on the play:

Camille is based on La Dame aux Camélias, Alexandre Dumas' autobiographical novel.

Armand, the young man who loves Marguerite so much that he can neither eat nor sleep, was based on Dumas and Marguerite - the object of his affection - is based on a woman named Marie Duplessis.