‘The Awakening’ a rousing show from the Breadbox

If you’re prone to congratulating yourself for your feminist enlightenment, Breadbox Theatre’s production of “The Awakening” is a salutary reminder of how far we as a society — and you, specifically, for this production is nothing if not personal in its indictment of mores — have to go in overcoming sexism.

For the journey of Edna Pontellier (Maria Giere Marquis) from unhappy housewife to committed nonconformist — a journey that famously ends in the ocean, where she drowns herself — is not just a feminist tale; it’s also humanist.

With acrobatics she conjures the freedom of swimming; with a harsh, swirling dance, she evokes the violence of the love quadrangle (there’s a third man, Alcee, played by Elliot Lieberman) into which Edna’s entwined herself.

Stevens’ wonderfully theatrical script makes that physicality possible, no small feat for a story that’s rooted in a single character’s interior state.

All the characters who populate Edna and Leonce’s summer resort on Grand Isle and their high society back in New Orleans also embody the contradictory voices in Edna’s head.

(They are, and Gillman is superb with Robert’s own confusion about being taken seriously by a woman.) Those voices never completely leave the stage until the show’s final scene, which is also the first time Edna has a monologue, and, not coincidentally, says at length what she really thinks: “I want to be running!”