"Madwoman of Chaillot' (1st review) and "Marat/Sade' (3rd review) at

Actors, directors and designers frequently express two complaints about Philadelphia's theater community: the cliquey, high-school atmosphere of the companies, and the sheer number of groups that cloud the arts calendar with run-of-the-mill productions. I don't sympathize much with the former complaint, which often comes from performers criticizing social-artistic circles they'd like to join.

The latter complaint I appreciate from an economic perspective. Too many companies producing similar work with too few sources of support hamstring many small organizations into staging underfunded shows. Financial limits constrain artistic choices to small-cast plays while also reducing the potential for spectacle in costumes, lighting, music and scenic design.

But at least two companies—Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium (IRC) and EgoPo— consistently turn these conditions to their advantage. While Philadelphia's other troupes fight over the rights to this season's third and fourth productions of Putnam County Spelling Bee, the IRC and EgoPo occupy boutique spots near the end of the theater market's long tail. Both excel by carving out a niche spot, and their current Fringe Festival productions demonstrate how to reap the few benefits of a cliquey social climate while turning a limited budget into a theatrical asset.

Capitalists and socialists

The IRC only produces plays canonized as "Theatre of the Absurd," a quality illustrated perfectly in its madcap staging of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot. Here, greedy capitalists plan to dig for oil under a Parisian café after a prospector with an oenophile's nose for petroleum sniffs it out in the drinking water. Countess Aurelia (Tina Brock) and her regular patrons— a deaf mute, a sewer man, shoelace peddler, among others— stand in the way, so bankers blackmail a young man into blowing up the zoning commissioner.

Yes, I know— it sounds like BP's strategic drilling plan. But Giraudoux blurs the lines by poking fun at capitalists, socialists and reactionaries alike. Brock's direction capitalizes on the absurd humor, particularly in her casting of a trio of batty society ladies— the excellent Kirsten Quinn, Sonja Robson, and Jane Stojak— and the jester-like comic timing of Bob Schmidt's Rag Picker.

I balked when I heard that IRC planned to stuff 18 actors (across 30 roles) into the small, 60-seat space of the Walnut Street Theatre's Studio 5. Stephen Hungerford's minimal set of two walls and some furniture caves back diagonally into the stage to serve as the streetside café and Aurelia's subterranean cellar, and only Brian Strachan's ornate costumes show the signs of expense.

But the budget restraints— even in IRC's most ambitious production to date— enable the audience to focus entirely on the clever writing and skillful delivery. It's a safe bet that most actors could more competently play Ibsen than Ionesco, and by casting a number of IRC regulars (including herself, which under Barrymore Awards rules saves money), director Brock could count on the comedic talents of Lee Pucklis, Kate Black-Regan, Michael Dura and Schmidt to shine through with minimal direction.

Thrilling and terrifying

Like the IRC, EgoPo works its highly physical style of acting within a well-defined mission while consistently casting faces now familiar to its patrons. Both of these features turn their production of Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade into a thrilling and terrifying theatrical experience.

Weiss's script accomplishes what its title suggests, displaying a collection of asylum inmates performing a play written by the Marquis de Sade (David Blatt) about the assassination of the French Revolution leader Jean Paul Marat (Steve Wright). The text tackles tough political themes, pitting the ultra-individualist libertine de Sade's — for whom "murder should be the highest expression of his self"—against Marat's social engineer turned executioner, a man who "knows what he wants but not how he should act."

While these rivals debate, the inmates sing songs of revolution and waver trepidatiously between their historical roles and the embodiments of their own neuroses. Charlotte Corday (Megan Hoke) drifts into a narcoleptic slumber, a sex mania compels the aristocrat Duperret (Andrew Clotworthy) to continually assault her, and Marat's lover Simonne (Sarah Schol) retreats from the play-within-a-play's horrors into obsessive-compulsive housecleaning.

Most of these actors have previously worked for EgoPo, and it shows both in the risks they're willing to take with one another on stage, and in the unified ferocity of the ensemble performance.

Director's triumph

If Marat/Sade owes its success to any one person, the credit must go to director Brenna Geffers. Where Weiss's writings could appear pedantic, Geffers lends these passages a lyrical quality with her production's intentionally declamatory style. And as she proved in EgoPo's sensational Waiting for Godot, Geffers understands how to build a story around movement better than most Philadelphia choreographers.

Between the rapes, beatings and assorted abuse, everything in this production could easily appear distasteful. Yet Geffers lures us in at each turn, using Jered McLenigan's incredible charisma to woo us back after each bit of violence, Wright's and Ross Beschler's maddening conviction to re-energize us, and Blatt's intense regal bearing as de Sade to ground the play's philosophy (seriously, minters could etch his face on a coin).

Geffers's use of Mathew Wright's original music and the highly physical staging inside the cavernous Rotunda force the audience to participate. One moment we're carousing along like cheerleaders to a collegiate fight song, the next we're reeling in horror from the casualties inflicted by the blood sport of revolution. With no set, minimal lighting and uninvolved costuming, Geffers evokes all the themes of Weiss's text to blur the lines between creativity and madness, crime and revolution, and historical truth and political fantasy.

Geffers, who has progressed through the ranks of dramaturge and literary manager, will get her chance to direct a mainstage production at Theatre Exile this coming spring. I can't wait to see what she'll imagine with a full budget and a paid staff, when she's already proven how to achieve so much theatricality with nothing but a talented cast.♦


To read another review of Marat/Sade by Norman Roessler, click here.
To read another review of Marat/Sade by Anne R. Fabbri, click here.
To read another review of Marat/ Sade by Steve Cohen, click here.
To read another review of The Madwoman of Chaillot by Steve Cohen, click here.