Curio Theatre Company presents David Adjmi's 'Marie Antoinette'

Curio’s stylish production — directed by Brenna Geffers and performed on Paul Kuhn’s gilded, ornate set — cannot overcome the tonal imbalance in Adjmi’s writing. The first act unspools like an extended sketch-comedy skit.

Marie (Jennifer Summerfield) winks to the audience after making a joke about cake. She rages at the suggestion that she’s secretly a lesbian. She expresses indignation that her effete husband, King Louis XVI (Brian McCann, winning in a one-joke role), would rather fiddle with his beloved clocks than give her a child.

Hints of nationalistic turmoil are mostly kept to the periphery or consigned to projected narrative titles that flash between scenes. (At the performance I attended, the texts were often cut off.) Adjmi references the many misogynistic criticisms leveled against the queen — she’s described as “some bitch from Austria who gives everyone blowjobs” — but fails to address them in any substantial way. Marie describes herself as “so misunderstood,” but Summerfield’s largely facile treatment rarely suggests an untapped inner life.

Meet the monarchs

The play takes on more emotional weight in the second act, when Marie and Louis have largely been stripped of power. But Adjmi still doubles down on his humorous impulses. The couple’s failed attempt to escape at Varennes unfolds like a comic caper; we never fully grasp their last-ditch desperation or the sting of their defeat. The drama turns resolutely dark in the final scenes, but by then you’re left wondering to what end.

Unlike Sofia Coppola’s 2006 filmic treatment — which characterized the monarchs as patsies deserving pure sympathy — Adjmi seems unsure of how to present Marie. The play covers a wide narrative expanse, from 1776 to 1793, but the character shows little evidence of growth or maturity.

As her death approaches, Adjmi imbues Marie with a level of self-awareness largely missing from the earlier scenes; for the first time, we understand her as a victim of circumstance rather than a malicious gorgon. But he also positions her as the French Revolution’s answer to Joan of Arc, which seems entirely unearned.

Geffers largely ties the play’s loose ends together, and the strong ensemble — Rich Bradford, Jessica DelCanton, Twoey Truong, and Liam Mulshine — individuate more than a dozen roles. But some of Geffers’s more outré choices, like having a life-sized doll stand in for the Dauphin of France (voiced by Mulshine), are too clever by half. DelCanton occasionally appears as a sentient sheep who serves as Marie’s spirit animal; although she meets the challenge with tongue-in-cheek wit, it’s a too-literal representation of the lamb-to-slaughter metaphor.

Both the historical Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution were nothing if not complicated. But in Adjmi’s telling, they’re often reduced to surface-level stereotypes. Marie Antoinette ultimately resembles the sugary confections Marie munches on in better days: sometimes tasty, sometimes dense, but mostly empty.