MARAT/SADE
Representing incompatible extremes on this matter are the radical politico Marat and the Marquis de Sade, the perverse apostle of subjectivity and sex. Marat, denouncer of corruption and avowed enemy of all enemies of the people, represents an inflexible idealism, a rigid ideology that takes no prisoners but has a certain existential elegance: “In the vast indifference I invent a meaning.” His meaning is revolution.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The play’s setting, the asylum at Charenton in 1808, is crucial. Coulmier, the director of this supposedly enlightened institution, has invited various Parisian notables to his clinic to witness a performance given behind bars by his colorful loonies. The creatures will perform a new and, it is hoped, rehabilitative play written by Charenton’s most illustrious madman, the Marquis de Sade. Celebrating the French Revolution, which has now led to Napoleon’s seemingly unstoppable triumphs, the play recounts the 1793 murder of Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday, a virgin from the provinces who, sick to death of the guillotine’s endless harvests, resolved to kill the biggest killer.
Ironically, the riot that overwhelms Weiss’s finale is as much a flashback as anything in Sade’s scenario.
It’s hard to know where to start the indictment or end it. Little things spring to mind, like Quinn’s making the nuns enjoy the very outrages they should oppose. Among many fatal errors is the way the actors mindlessly play everything on the same level of lunacy; there’s only madness to their madness. Far from making us believe that their suffering matters, we’re glad the psychopaths are locked up. Unlike any other production of Marat/Sade, this one makes you sympathize with the jailers–just the opposite of the playwright’s purpose. It’s as if Nurse Ratched had been made the hero of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
