Words pack a wallop among the women of ‘The Revolutionists’
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Revolutions begin with a declaration and end with famous last words. You can take your sticks and stones and guillotines, and bones that break and heads that roll. It’s words that get the job done and words that are immortal.
Playwright Lauren Gunderson’s words have brought “four badass women” —- phrase attached to this play at every turn —- to full-blooded life in “The Revolutionists,” a funny and ferocious woman’s-eye view of France’s Reign of Terror.
The French citizenry may be shouting “Viva la France!” in their lust for freedom and blood, but inherent in City Theatre’s season opener is “Viva la femme auteur!”
This all-female production is an in-your-face declaration of the power of women’s stories told in a woman’s voice. In this case, give her a quill pen and an audience, and watch the stirrings of “Liberte! Egalite! … Soroite!” take hold.
But please, no puppets. And no musicals! Who would want a musical about the French Revolution anyway? Although it is referenced here, “Les Miserables” was about another citizen uprising, many years in the future, yet it fits right into the heap of anachronisms in “The Revolutionists.”
Ms. Gunderson has quickly become an uber-popular playwright with plays in a variety of eras and circumstances that speak to the state of feminism today.
Among her real-life mouthpieces on the subject is the playwright Olympe de Gouges, who championed her gender during the revolution with the treatise “The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen,” sealing her fate. Citizen rights were one thing, but rights for women? Not happening.
Daina Michelle Griffith gives a powerfully conflicted performance of a woman at war within —- as “Madame Guillotine” looms, she claims writer’s block and the need to put down a great fictional entertainment, before she finally submits to the inspiration that swirls all around her.
Ms. Griffith, fresh from her star turn in the demanding musical “Grey Gardens” by Front Porch Theatricals, hasn’t lost a drop of energy as Olympe, a redhead with a flaming passion for monologues.
Enter two women demanding her words.
First comes the fiery fictional Caribbean abolitionist and spy Marianne Angelle, played by Shamika Cotton with dignity and determination. She enters asking for a declaration —- like that of the Americans —- to free the slaves in her country. But it is Marianne, and not the writer Olympe, who proves most eloquent among the women we meet.
She touts the power of words —- “A good deed needs a story” — and sums up what Olympe needs to hear.
Ms. Gunderson can be pushy with the ironic turn of phrase. We get, for instance, that puppets are a distraction and not the spark Olympe needs to cure her writer’s block. The inspiration is the women who come knocking at her door and the horrible sounds of angry mobs in the streets.
Next to enter, fighting, is “the angel of assassins,” Charlotte Corday. Moira Quigley sinks her teeth into the role of a fed-up young woman with murderous intent. She intends to kill a man of letters, journalist, politician and supposed man of the people JeanPaul Marat, whose words inspire the massacre of anyone who disagree with him.
Among those would of course be the deposed queen Marie Antoinette, played by Drew Leigh Williams, who Pittsburgh has seen mostly killing it in musical comedies. Here, she shows her range and brings poignancy to an outrageously drawn character. Marie’s choice of words —a certain suggestion about cake — gave her immortality in a way that brought down the harsh judgment of history on her head. Ms. Gunderson treats the disgraced royal with a bit more sympathy here.
Words spill from these women in fits and torrents, and sometimes in waves of ironies and outright jokes. Much of “The Revolutionists” is very isn’t.
This is, after all, 1793, the Reign of Terror, and every knock at the door could mean death is coming for you.
Olympe, the writer, speaks most of “Madame Guillotine,” perhaps an unsaid rebuke that the instrument of death has been expressed as feminine, doing the dirty work for men like Marat. Corday became his assassin, having witnessed the bloodbath he inspired and with Ms. Quigley capturing a zealot’s conviction.
In the world of “The Revolutionists,” the playful and the dreadful form are aligned, only to fitfully break ranks for moments of laughter and horror.
A comedy that ends in tragedy? That’s life, we are told.
Director Jade King Carroll (”Sunset Baby” at City) has her hands full pulling off a jokey tone that takes a sobering 180. This is not a Mel Brooks’ laugh in the face of war; the historic figures who met their deaths at the guillotine do not go down with a smile.
From the start, we know this will not be all fun and games. Scattered chandeliers create a moody glow more “Phantom of the Opera” than “A Night at the Opera.”
From among the creative team, set designer Anne Mundell and lighting designer Nicole Pearce move the characters from relative safety to the gallows with a few stirring sight tricks.
“The Revolutionists” opens City’s 44th season. It is a season planned between artistic directors — with Tracy Brigden out and Marc Masterson headed back in for a second stint as AD. The revolutionary theme and first local production of a Gunderson work is a fitting restart for Pittsburgh’s new-play theater, where there was a playful atmosphere on opening night. Patrons had their choice of props to pose with for pictures before heading to their seats for some declarations by a major voice in American theater and a new spotlight on some infamous women’s famous last words. funny. Until it