Steve Noll
Revolutionary women (trom left) Olympe de Gouges (Stephanie Monday), Marianne Angelle (Laura Jo McMillan) and Charlotte Corday (Mikayla Mrochek).
In many ways Lauren Gunderson’s play, The Revolutionists, is a timely choice for Mercury Players Theatre. Onstage through Feb. 29 at the Bartell Theatre, it is fundamentally a play about four women who feel powerless to create the societal change they are longing for, in the midst of incredible political upheaval. If the story was set in 2017, the women might have been wearing pussy hats.
But instead the story unfolds in 1793 during the French Revolution, where men and women were losing their heads by the guillotine simply for speaking their minds. Sensing that they are living in a pivotal time in history, three of the main characters — a writer, an assassin and a queen — all want to make sure their last acts resonate for generations, that they are remembered fairly, and that their dramatic last words are quotable.
Directed by the fearless Sean Langenecker, the production succeeds on several levels, but can’t quite get past the tiresome “play about a playwright writing a play” trope that even the characters write off as a painful exercise. (Maybe it should have been a musical! But no one would come to see a musical about the French Revolution, amiright? Wink!)
The set, also by Langenecker, uses the black box stage in a new and clever way, putting audiences on two sides and literally backing the rebellious women into a corner (spoiler alert) down a blood-splattered platform to their deaths. With a huge French flag painted on the floor and movies depicting the violent, 18th century unrest projected on the white stripe to ground the scene, there is no mistaking the play for realistic docudrama. Spare pieces of period-looking furniture allow the women (and their voluminous dresses) lots of room to argue for their separate causes and to hold each other accountable for their actions, or lack thereof.
While the language is modern and much of the comedy is self-consciously meta, the historical costume design by Marie Schulte is ambitious. Charlotte Corday (a steely Mikayla Mrochek) is a convincing woman of the people, in a cotton lavender gown with a gray striped underskirt and handy belt to stash her steak knife, meant later for the journalist Marat. (Perfect for Stabbing! The Musical!)
Marianne Angelle (Laura Jo McMillan), a Haitian agitator protesting France’s enslavement and colonial rule of her people, and the infamous French queen Marie Antoinette (Jessica Jane Witham) are particularly well outfitted in layered, gorgeous dresses of luxe fabric with the complicated undergarments to match. Witham’s elaborate and enormous blonde wig, complete with strands of pearls, ribbons and a peacock feather (fashioned by Laura Yoccum and Dawn Marie Svanoe), is practically a character in its own right.
Gunderson’s talky, much too precious script is buoyed by McMillan and Witham’s performances in particular. As a revolutionary looking for Olympe de Gouges (a timid Stephanie Monday) to publish political pamphlets about the plight of her fellow Haitians, McMillan is a clear-eyed outsider who has a very specific mission and a strong moral code that she urges the other, less confident women to follow. She skillfully communicates Angelle’s compelling backstory, emotional arc and a fair amount of exposition so that it doesn’t feel like a history lesson.
The other women in the play are not so lucky — the text saddles them with one-note rage, shallow preening, whining, philosophical preaching, and cheap comic asides. This is a bit ironic, since Angelle is the only fictional character in the play, and de Gouges and Corday were fascinating, accomplished women.Witham’s Marie Antoinette arrives in de Gouges’ salon asking the playwright to rehabilitate her reputation so she doesn’t go down in history as an unfeeling, clueless symbol of a debauched aristocracy. This is a tall order, since much of her initial dialogue actually reinforces this notion. But Witham’s vocal and emotional range gives the character surprising depth. Underneath her fascination with ribbons and pretty clothes, the actor reveals vulnerability and intelligence that helps the audience sympathize with Marie’s limited choices.
The pacing drags a bit at the end — focusing on a final trip to the guillotine that we all know is coming — and the “song that sticks” isn’t as melodious or resonant as it could have been. But there are enough compelling moments and striking visuals to make The Revolutionists an interesting evening, even if the audience learns very little about some of history’s most fascinating women.
