New Play about Marie-Antoinette

The world premiere of David Adjmi's Marie Antoinette will be the opening production in the 2012-2013 season at American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.). Rebecca Taichman will direct the piece, which A.R.T. is co-producing with Yale Repertory Theatre.

The play focuses on the infamous French queen at both her height of power and as her fortunes turn. Casting will be announced in the near future.

Review by Jan Rosenberg

It’s not easy being Queen. In this zany, disturbing portrait directed by Rebecca Taichman, we’re given a kaleidoscope view of the emotionally disturbed historical pop icon. Marin Ireland’s thrilling portrayal of the doomed Queen of France is so multifaceted that it’s hard to believe that Marie is portrayed by only one actress.

Though Anka Lupe’s costume design insists that we’re in eighteenth century France, Adjmi’s characters speak with modern day affectations. Listening to Marie and her friends gossip, one might feel that they’re listening to the mean girls gossip in a high school cafeteria. Their language is a hybrid of ditzy Valley Girl and dramatic social media emoticons.

Molded and packaged to be Queen since childhood, Marie claims she often feels unfairly judged and trapped. She can’t seem to do anything right. Though she’s revered as a fashion icon, she’s criticized for her lavish spending and failure to produce an heir with King Louis XVI (played by Stephen Rattazzi). She seeks out sympathy from her friends Yolande De Polignac (Marsha Stephanie Blake) and Therese De Lamballe (Jennifer Ikeda). They nod politely and nibble pastries as Marie complains, but their discomfort is clear from their uneasy glances and punctuated silences. It’s easy to understand why they walk on eggshells with her, for at the drop of a hat Marie turns into Regina George a la ‘Mean Girls’.

Marie’s cruelty stems from insecurities with herself as Queen and an emotionally stagnant childhood. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not even a person,” she laments. She claims her Mother could barely remember her fifteen siblings’ names, and this is reflected in her shortness with her son The Dauphin (Aimee Laurence). Her husband King Louis XVI receives the brunt of her maliciousness. Soft spoken and painfully shy, he cowers in fear of his wife and her brother Emperor Joseph (Karl Miller). Reviled by his childishness and sexual impotence, Marie flirts with family friend Axel Fersen (Chris Stack). We see her begin to lose traction with reality, culminating in conversations with an all-knowing sheep (David Greenspan) who seems to act as prophetic warning of her downfall. As matters in France become increasingly dire, the beast in Marie begins to rear its ugly head. The Royal Family attempts escape from France, but are found and thrown in prison, now considered enemies of the state. As they wait to learn of their fate, Marie becomes a spitfire, snapping viciously at her frightened family and challenging the revolutionary guards (Will Pullen) with heated defiance. By the end, Marie is literally and figuratively stripped. What’s left is a hollow shell of a woman never equipped with proper tools to be a wife, mother, or a leader. Says Marie regrettably, “It’s like some awful dream, and it’s never been mine”.

if you associate Antoinette with a pop star at the very beginning, then the whole portrayal can't be nothing else but inaccurate.

This weekend The French Theatrical Foundation presented “Marie-Antoinette In Her Own Words” at the Modern Theatre. The French Theatrical Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of French and French-Language performing arts.

The play was a one-act, one-woman show starring French actress Barbara Schulz and directed by Katherine Adamov. Schulz has been featured in over 50 films and television programs, is one of France’s leading actresses in theatre and on television and film, and was nominated for a French Oscar, a Cèsar.

The play is adapted from Evelyne Lever’s book Marie Antoinette, The Last Queen of France. Lever is a French historian and author. It takes place from the very moment Antoinette arrives in Versailles, to her last letter right before she was killed.

Prior to the play’s weekend at the Modern Theater, producer Ross Mitchell, Schulz, and Adamov held a Q&A session at the Studio Theater located in Archer. All three gave a great deal of insight into what the production and staging process was like for the show. They also gave very strong opinions to back up their point of view on Antoinette and the performance at hand.

In this depiction of Antoinette, she is shown as more of a true and human projection of the French queen rather than the common condescending view that most portrayals give her. “It is more about the heart, and less about the thought process.” Schultz said. She sees it as being more important to give her a voice than to depict all of her actions as being foul and wrong.

Bunnies wrote:That is, if you associate Antoinette with a wronged victim at the very beginning, then the whole portrayal can't be nothing else but inaccurate.

On that note, a friend of mine once concocted a very amusing, but terrifyingly well-argued, thesis contending that Marie-Antoinette was one of the forerunners of Communism. Obviously untrue, and my friend was patently joking, but it just goes to show: if you let your preconceptions bring you to evidence rather than the evidence bring you to conceptions, you'll... Well, you'll be able to "prove" whatever you want, but it won't necessarily be accurate, now will it?