Don’t miss the tour de force Marie Antoinette at Stages Repertory Theatre running through Sunday, November 9, 2014.
There’s a whole lot happening onstage in David Adjimi’s Marie Antoinette, making its regional premiere at Stages Repertory Theatre (through November 9, 2014): a lot of dialogue, a lot of neon, a lot of history. And crammed into this crash course about the French Revolution and the woman who seemed both its scapegoat and catalyst is something more: a cutting social commentary on what we owe our fellow men, how where we’re born in society shapes our lives, and the way history has a funny way of remembering events.
If all you know about Marie Antoinette is that she’s the one who said, “Let them eat cake,” be prepared for a shock. Because Adjimi’s script paints her first as a young queen, as entitled as she is naïve and, later, as a woman struggling to hold onto dignity in the face of humiliating opposition. In her life, the real Marie Antoinette, an Austrian, was shipped off to the French court to be married to the Dauphin, who would become Louis XVI. She was always an outsider, looked on with suspicion, a spendthrift who found herself the target of the French population’s ire. Little wonder. In a time of great economic distress, Marie’s fine dress and her “playing peasant” in her petite Trianon palace made her seem both mean-spirited and out of touch. When the French Revolution began in 1789, the royal family was kidnapped and imprisoned. The monarchy was deposed. Louis XVI was beheaded in 1793. Ten months later, Marie was as well.
The storyline of the play sticks pretty closely to that abbreviated biography, and the script uses the doomed queen as something of a blank canvas. Was she an illiterate airhead? Homesick for her beloved Austria, where she lived a vastly less restricted life than in France? A woman of great grace and strength? The script never much decides, presenting her careening from young adulthood to middle age.
Emily Neves absolutely owns the stage in the title role. She simpers, snipes, pouts, whines, flirts and fights her way through the evening. Rather like Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind, she’s in nearly every scene, and her stamina is only outshone by her sheer talent and the pathos she brings to the part. Wrenching emotions from the girlish to gut-wrenching, her Marie is utterly human, flawed – and often quite funny.
Mitchell Grecco, who also choreographed the production, plays her husband, Louis XVI with an addlepated air. His character isn’t drawn very well; that’s not his fault, it’s the script’s. But, he brings to bear a king who seems caught between action and inaction – and his lack of understanding is disastrous, both for himself and his family, and the nation.
Luis Galindo, always great to watch, here turns in a terrific performance as a sheep, and Shawn Hamilton delivers both Marie’s brother Joseph and the character of Mr. Sauce, one of the royal family’s kidnappers-turned-jailers with fine timing and deft touch.
But the play belongs to Marie.
Ryan McGettigan’s set centerpieces are giant neon curlicues that give the feel of being in a weird, wacky post-modern discoteque. With minimal furnishings, and aided by brilliant lighting by Devlin Browning, the stage is transformed from pastoral garden to dark jail. Barry Doss’ costumes are epic. Seriously. Epic.
Leslie Swackhamer directs the cast with care, creativity, and tremendous comic timing. What could be a dry, overwrought drama shimmers as a living, breathing entity, thanks to her sure hand and Adjimi’s witty, cheeky prose, which upends the idea of historic figures talking like stuffy English teachers.
This is a show that draws you in, from the very first scene and holds you captive all the way through to the raw, inevitable conclusion. If the first act could’ve been a trifle shorter, it’s no matter. The brilliant, carefree feel of it is upended in spectacular fashion, leading into act two, giving a stark juxtaposition to the Revolution that changed the face of France. If you find your sympathy shifting from time to time from the royal family to the revolutionaries, consider it a consequence of seeing such a fine team at work.
For lovers of theater, there’s a lot to love here. But it’s also a rate opportunity to watch a start develop right in front of your eyes. That alone is worth the price of admission. Everything else is icing on the cake.
Marie Antoinette at Stages Repertory Theatre
- Dates: Through Sunday, November 9, 2014
- Times: Wednesdays and Thursdays 7:30pm; Fridays and Saturdays 8pm; Sundays 3pm
- Location: Stages Repertory Theatre, 3201 Allen Parkway, Suite 101, Houston, Texas 77019
- Admission: Tickets start at $19. Click here to order online.
