New York Times Review of the Revolutionists Gunderson
The empty-headed sense of discovery takes concur of you during Lauren Gunderson's plays most unsung women throughout history. This fall's theater highlight was certainly Avant Bard'southward luminous product of Emilie: La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life This evening, which brought to brilliant low-cal the life and beautiful heed of the 18th-century mathematician and physicist who was a lot more than than simply a fanciful footnote every bit Voltaire'due south lover.
Everyman's lively and crazy-timely production of The Revolutionists continues this marvelous trajectory as four more women'due south stories are stripped of myth and misogyny and portrayed honestly and with electrifying truth.
Gunderson's fantasy-comedy, directed by Casey Stangl with a penchant for the cerebral and the screwball, imagines a meeting between four women during France'southward Reign of Terror (1793-1794): feminist playwright Olympe de Gouges (Megan Anderson, portraying Olympe with a author'south ego and touching vulnerability), assassin Charlotte Corday (played with anarchism grrrl intensity and attitude Emily Kester), French queen Marie Antoinette (Beth Hylton) and Marianne Angelle (the arrestingly articulate Dawn Ursula), a radical and spy from Haiti rallying against slavery in the Caribbean French colonies. The Oui-Oui Sisterhood, if you will.
The characters barge in on Olympe as she is trying to write an "important" play about women's roles in times of revolution—sororite in a time that emphasizes fraternite. And as anyone who writes knows, when you sit down to write something epic and important through the ages, you wind up frittering the twenty-four hours away watching true cat videos.
Olympe is doing the xviiithursday century version of just that when her friend and comrade in arms Marianne enters, the fictional embodiment of the eloquent and impassioned national symbol of the French republic, non coincidentally likewise named Marianne.
Marianne asks for pamphlets and declarations for her cause, and before Olympe can grab a quill, in storms Charlotte Corday enervating an indelible "final line" before her appointment with destiny—a meeting in Jacobin journalist and zealot Marat's chambers, where she volition stab him in his bathtub for the French people. (By the way, her last line is a killer, delivered at the guillotine "I killed ane man to salve 100,000." Needless to say, history has portrayed Marat equally a martyr and Corday as a nut).
The conversational roar goes upwardly a few decibels with the arrival of Marie Antoinette, an entitled airhead with speaks in 3rd person, but who reveals herself as achingly homo and vilified by muckraking journalists who condemn her as a libertine, lesbian and capable of committing incest with her children.
No one except for possibly Beyoncé tin can relate to Marie's opulence-cubed lifestyle (replicas of ships anchored in her pilus; miniature mansions scattered effectually Versailles "only for fun") but you have to take some sympathy for a 13-yr-old bride who met her husband-to-be on their wedding solar day and who had to requite nascency in front end of hundreds of people in court.
Marie'due south here for a rewrite of her story—she doesn't deny her royal excesses, but she wants people to know there'south more to her than pompadours and jewels. "It's ever the women who have to practice the changing, isn't it?," Marie observes, 1 of many bon mots that slip from her oral fissure like bon-bons.
Her cocky-absorption and obliviousness reminds you of the character Karen on Will and Grace and Hylton has Megan Mullallay's comic timing and irresistibleness. Her Marie is vain, but sparkly and she buoys upwardly a one-act that sometimes gets mired in loftier-falluting discussions most the importance of theater and art, especially in times of turmoil.
A delicious example of this is when Marie asks Charlotte for a processed, which she tortuously unwraps with cellophane-crackling glee while Olympe breathlessly describes the plot of her new play about misunderstood Marie Antoinette. Priceless.
Dawn Ursula as Marianne Angelle in The Revolutionists at Everyman Theatre (Photo: ClintonBPhotography)
Yes, The Revolutionists is that tricky and often dreaded play-within-a-play and Gunderson tends to become carried abroad with polemics almost theater every bit a living, breathing, relevant art course and non an enjoyable distraction for the aristocracy and the urgent need for more than women in all aspects of the theater.
Her points are true, only in the midst of such zingy and witty dialogue betwixt the four women, the esoteric stuff seems like a lecture or an op-ed slice. And the metatheater touches are oftentimes tedious and uncomfortable, especially at the end when the bandage notices, addresses and thanks the audience. Awkward.
The play'southward mingling of 18th oral communication and mod patois (all the women are described equally "badass" at some point) is a hoot and a source of much of the play's comedic elevator (kudos to Audio Designer C. Andrew Mayer, who has today's performers such as Lady Gaga played on the harpsichord), but so there are times when Gunderson just throws cheap laughs in there willy-nilly, such as the frequent references to Les Misérables, which has nothing at all to do with the French Revolution.
The Revolutionist is flawed, but that shouldn't terminate anyone from reveling in the power of women's truths unearthed and the astonishing relevance of this play in this time of #me too, a sweeping social upheaval poised to cancel the casting couch and its sexual opportunism designed to oppress and silence women for good.
"Sometimes, a revolution needs a woman's touch," Marie Antoinette says. Damn straight. The Revolutionists is a call to action for all. Take hold of your cherry-red sash and go.
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The Revolutionistsby Lauren Gunderson . Director: Casey Stangl. Featuring Megan Anderson, Beth Hylton, Emily Kester, Dawn Ursula . Set and Production Blueprint: Daniel Ettinger. Lighting Blueprint: Elizabeth Harper. Costume Design: David Burdick. Sound Blueprint: C. Andrew Mayer. Dialects: Steve Satta. Fight Choreography: Lewis Shaw. Wig Design: Annie Nesmith. Dramaturgy: Robyn Quick. Props Master: Jilliam Mathews. Phase Manager: True cat Wallis. Produced by Everyman Theatre . Reviewed past Jayne Blanchard.
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Source: https://dctheatrescene.com/2017/12/11/review-revolutionists-lauren-gunderson-sometimes-revolution-needs-womans-touch/
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