The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade a.k.a. Marat/Sade
by Peter Weiss
Directed by Wes Martin
The Shakespeare Theatre
Phoenix Theatre's Little Theatre, Phoenix
(602) 796-2038
September 24th - October 9th, 2004
$10.00 - $15.00

The Shakespeare Theatre, in an attempt to differentiate itself from the growing mass of classical theatres, is expanding its horizons. First it offered a gut-wrenching mounting of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and now Artistic Director Wes Martin is tackling the intellectual and artistic behemoth with the unwieldy title of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade, more commonly known as Marat/Sade. This play is a marvel, the kind of environmental and intellectual theatre rampant in the mid to late 60s. First produced in 1964 Berlin, playwright Peter Weiss found himself heralded as the new Brecht. This is actually a good point of reference, as Weiss and Brecht have a lot in common: A pervasively and militantly left-wing political stance; the desire to smash bourgeois theatrical conventions, and a smattering of a twisted type of musical theatre. While this play is set in a madhouse in Napoleon’s French Empire in 1808, it is the madness of Martin that is the biggest highlight here. Who in their right mind thinks the valley of the sun will embrace such a vibrant, abrasive work, even 40 years after its first mounting? Martin is as crazy as the inmates that perform the Marquis de Sade’s (Charles Sohn) polemic production pitting the Jean-Paul Marat’s (Franc Gaxiola) desperate forces of self-righteous revolution against the hollow pleasures of Sade’s self-destructive nihilism. We should all thank the heavens for Martin’s madness, even if basic production problems undercut the power of this insane quest.

Set in the asylum of de Sade’s incarceration following the bloodiest part of the French Revolution, the play makes us the audience that attends de Sade’s play recreating the murder of popular rabble-rousing revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday (Stacie Stocker), a former novice hoping to end Marat’s bloodshed. Since this act is being interpreted through the unique perspective of the formerly titled purveyor of published pain, there are many political undertones within, added onto by the fact that the actors portraying the various roles in this moment of history are inmates of the asylum. Marat is played by a paranoiac, Corday by a narcoleptic, defrocked clergyman Jacques Roux (Greg Hynes) as a psychotic in a clerical straightjacket, and the saintly Duperret (Kane Anderson) by a sexual predator.

Martin is right on -- to a point. As you walk in, Hynes’ excellent set (a dingy shower facility) successfully puts you right into the moment. The pre-show is an exhibition of the lunatics being rounded up to play their roles. This is where the problems start. These are funny lunatics, playing to the audience and doing most anything for a laugh. A consistent mix of pathos and funny might have been less obvious. Save for a few of the actors onstage including Sohn, Anderson, Stocker, and Hynes, characters tend to rise and fall, appear and disappear; facial ticks cease and restart, character traits specific to the types of dementia the actors have chosen slip on and off like the ill-fitting clothing in Stocker's good costume design. Most often, when an actor is called upon to speak, their illness is replaced by oratory. This is most obvious with the performance of Gaxiola. When twitching in his paranoiac state in the bathtub, he is a pathetic quivering mass; however, when he is called upon to become heroic, he co-opts a saner persona to make his character’s pronouncements. The effect is striking, but also disconcerting. This is the case for many onstage, especially those in the ensemble, many of whom are the guiltiest of dropping their characters when the spotlight moves elsewhere.

This lack of consistency throughout the ensemble, though, is balanced by Martin and his cast’s willingness to go nearly everywhere for a point. There’s no half-heartedness about sex in this performance, and the violence causes just the right amount of discomfort. Sohn is quite enjoyable as the Marquis. This isn’t his greatest performance, but he still has just the right amount of sinister charm to keep us begrudgingly charmed. The best performances come from Rob Evans as the Herald, a sardonic narrator who is not quite inmate and not quite outsider, Anderson, who is not above a little (or a lot) of masturbation to make his point, Hynes’ Cassandra-like Roux, always fighting to keep his insanity in check, Mitch Etter’s pompous asylum-keeper Coulmier, stepping in and toeing the party line, and Stocker, whose character’s somnambulism keeps her floating above and around the proceedings until sex and violence awaken base passions within her.

While they overact shamelessly at some points, successfully at others, the singing quartet of David A. Lucas, Kyle Whitney, Wolfram Ott, and MaryAnn Martin still make an excellent chorus. They do suffer, as many in the ensemble also do, from severe mushmouth. It’s hard to decipher a surprisingly large amount of the dialogue, and they should take a lesson from George Spelvin, who is able to create a drooling, jabbering inmate while still enunciating his lines.

It’s true that there are lots of little problems in this show that keep it from attaining its strongest effect possible, it’s also important to note that a flawed gem like this is supplemented by the fact that it’s highly doubtful anyone else will be nuts enough to mount it again in Phoenix. Support your local nuthouse by seeing this insane endeavor.

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