EgoPo's "Marat/Sade' (1st review)

Combine Brenna Geffers's direction, David Blatt's characterization as the Marquis de Sade, Anthony Hostetter's scenic design and crash-land this cruel concoction in the enormous Sanctuary space at the Rotunda Theater and you just might have the most terribly satisfying theater pleasure of the year. Taking up where it left off with last season's Beckett Festival, EgoPo once again thumbs its nose at Philadelphia's conservative theater scene by inaugurating its Theater of Cruelty Festival with Marat / Sade.

Marat/Sade, originally written for the German stage by Peter Weiss in 1963, burst onto the international scene with a famous production by the Royal Shakespeare Company under the direction of Peter Brooks in 1964, followed by a cinematic adaptation in 1967. It depicts inmates of a French sanatorium asylum in 1808 performing a play, written by the Marquis de Sade, about the assassination of the radical leftist Jean Paul Marat, some 15 years earlier as the French Revolution began to move into its Reign of Terror phase. So it is a play within a play, within a history, within a biography, within an insane asylum, within the Theater of Cruelty, etc….

Yeah, Marat/Sade is a mind-fuck theatrical-historical puzzle that makes you think through theatrical form as much as historical content. The EgoPo folks should be arrested for violating the tender minds that comprise Philadelphia theater's scene— a dreary menu of musicals, children's theater, naturalist drama, rock concerts, and sporting events that, aesthetically speaking, condemn one to a prison house of melodramatic fascism. But they'll probably be punished with kindness and a Barrymore Award.

Uncanny venue

Let's bump it up to an Obie Award for setting the production in the Sanctuary at the Rotunda, a truly uncanny place to experience a production. Marat/Sade is a heavy load for a theater ensemble to deliver as well as for an audience to receive. By placing it in the Rotunda's huge domed space and then expanding this space by moving all the church pews to the side to create one bare circular stage, EgoPo allows the play's crazy mosaic to breathe, explode and vomit into enough space to be engaged by the audience.

Antonin Artaud, whose Theater of Cruelty manifesto (1938) is the inspiration for EgoPo's seasonal festival, would have appreciated the Sanctuary as well. Artaud wanted to abolish the traditional stage so that space would speak again through scenic hieroglyphs and the physical body of the performer, and consequently he sought a ritualized space that would break down the walls of our repressed, atomized consciousness as well as the divisions between actor and spectator.

The 13-member EgoPo ensemble stepped into this vast and strange performance space and fleshed it out quite well. The actors largely operated in a semi-circle, throwing their bodies around, screaming, yelling and convulsing; and then, without missing a beat, they straightened up to deliver crisp and constrained dialogue, song, or music. Four actors comprising a mad, revolutionary choral group (Cindy Spitko, Griffin Stanton-Ameisen, Matthew Wright and Josh Totora) played instruments on stage "“ harpsichord, cello, mandolin, flute"“ and added vocal accompaniment.

Toy harpsichord

Considering the amount of physical and vocal acting this production required, it was astonishing to see these players compose, literally and figuratively, after such strenuous undertakings. Matthew Wright, who played a toy harpsichord onstage, composed the music for the production, which had a very consonant if not beautiful tone yet operated against the mechanical, brutish lyrics.

Jered McLenigan, last seen in Nice Theater's production of Love Jerry at the Latvian Society, played the Herald, the production's stage manager, and successfully negotiated the role between carnival barker and cabaret emcee. Joe Canuso, artistic director of Theater Exile, lent a hand as Coulmier, the asylum director and symbol of the conservative reaction to the radical revolution.

The Marquis de Sade was assayed by David Blatt, also last seen in Love Jerry as Clowney, who endowed the Marquis with a noble and sadistic dignity. In contrast to the text as well as the original production, Blatt's de Sade didn't sit on the stage watching the production but was located, at least at the beginning of the production, in the far balcony. Certainly, it was a great visual, and along with the National Assembly scene after the intermission a great framing of the Sanctuary space; yet it also highlighted the problem with using such an expansive space: a loss of the visual and aural edginess of the play.

Masturbation on a church pew

At times the Sanctuary space literally swallowed dialogue, rendering it unhearable or dulled it to a point where lyrical, philosophical and historical significance was easily overlooked. For example, the first dialogue between Marat and Sade— a masterpiece of radical and reactionary interpretations of political revolution— was delivered efficiently by both Blatt and Steve Wright (Marat), but it didn't pop out of the background scene enough to really illuminate the power of the text. Likewise, the Cruel Aesthetic was, at times, overwhelmed by space and distance.

The actors do some outrageous things. My personal favorite, Cindy Spitko as Rossignol, calmly played cello and then, after a fit of hysteria, wandered aimlessly to the back of the stage space to masturbate on a church pew. Great stuff, I know. But in order to follow the character I lost touch with the rest of the proceedings.

Perhaps all this confusion was deliberate; and perhaps such is the way to do such a difficult production. The same issues arose with the Classical Theater of Harlem's production a few years ago in New York City and are evident, as well, in the 1967 film of Marat/Sade. The latter utilized cinematic techniques like quick cuts and close-ups to negotiate group and individual scenes, but the effect was also a bit unsatisfying.

The fault may well lie with Weiss's text: despite its Theater of Cruelty intentions it is, at the same time, a very literary text, demanding attention to words just as much as it demands attention to the body and space.

But these are quibbles that shouldn't obscure the fact that this production is a real achievement. Pure and simple: EgoPo's Marat/Sade is theater. In contrast to the usual tripe of the Philadelphia performance scene— EgoPo takes a chance, jumps into the abyss, and then tries to a figure a way out.♦


To read another review by Anne R. Fabbri, click here.
To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.