EgoPo's "Marat/ Sade' (4th review)

One advantage of seeing a play late in its run is that you can adjust your expectations based on information you received from others. In the case of Marat/ Sade I read and heard complaints about acoustical problems. (See, for example, Anne R. Fabbri's review.) Thus duly warned, I sought a seat in the center of the semi-circle of chairs— regardless of which row— where I was able to hear well.

Yes, sounds have a way of reverberating in the Sanctuary Rotunda. But from where I sat, I had no problem knowing what was going on. Drapes had been added behind the audience, and the actors had adjusted their delivery since opening night, when most other reviewers saw the play. The merits of using this venue outweighed its auditory problems, and the decaying building was marvelously effective as an incarnation of a 17th-Century institution (when the asylum of Charenton was built) and as metaphor for crumbling authority.

EgoPo produced a riveting interpretation of the play that I first saw in its famous 1964 Peter Brook/Royal Shakespeare Company production. At that time the main reaction was shock. EgoPo, by contrast, brings out the black humor of Peter Weiss's script. Laughs that were overlooked in 1964 are natural and abundant here. The characters' quirky behavior is better observed here, partly because of our physical closeness to the actors and partly because of Brenna Geffers's direction.

Like her mentor, EgoPo's founder Lane Savadove, Geffers emphasizes corporeal expression"“ bodies depicting the emotions of people. This approach works dramatically for group movements as well as in the small, idiosyncratic activities of each inmate, successfully balancing the depiction of the asylum inmates as mentally ill yet possessed of dignity and at least some innate lucidity.

Marat/ Sade, as you surely know by now, is set in 1808 at the Charenton mental hospital, where the Marquis de Sade was confined. De Sade actually organized plays performed by inmates, because authorities perceived such activity as therapeutic for the patients, and this supposed play of his concerns the assassination of the French Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat.

Fifteen years earlier, that radical journalist was killed after denouncing the first post-Revolutionary government as too conservative. The script shows a youthful Marat, whereas the actual man was 50 years old. Never mind. The play really concerns hopes versus reality, and expectations versus consequences.

It also seems to suggest that the more things change... plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. That helps explain Marat/ Sade's popularity during the Vietnam War era and its relevance today, amid Americans' intense debates about Presidential expectations versus performance.

A specific musical score was published with the play and has normally been used since 1964. EgoPo instead commissioned a new score by one of its performers, Matthew Wright, with supplementary help from Mozart. It's both apt and appealing.

There's no weak member of the cast. Special praise belongs to Jered McLenigan as the charismatic Herald, and to Sarah Schol and Cindy Spitko, who sang and played musical instruments in addition to acting deranged.♦


To read another review by Norman Roessler, click here.
To read another review by Anne R. Fabbri, click here.
To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.
To read a response, click here.