By Eric George Tauber
SAN DIEGO — One of my favorite sketches from The Muppets features Miss Piggy dressed as Marie-Antoinette. The pigs are arrayed in French Rococo finery singing “Stayin’ Alive.” But then, the guillotine looms ominously behind a window. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX284L12Rg0) As Americans, we embrace the French Revolution’s ideals of liberté, égalite and fraternité. But the sheer multitude of rolling heads from “Madame Guillotine” –sentenced in speedy trials by kangaroo courts- is pretty cringeworthy.
This brings us to the study of Olympe de Gouges, a playwright who’s passionate and idealistic, but not terribly successful. Folks walked out on her last show. “They say ‘Write what you know,’ but what if you write what you want?” De Gouges wants to champion the abolition of slavery and the rights of women, but writer’s block is getting in the way.
Jo Anne Glover is wittily acerbic and manic as De Gouges. When worked up, she talks a mile a minute. So listen carefully. Samantha Ginn blows in like a cyclone as Charlotte Corday. She’s facing the guillotine …for a crime she hasn’t committed yet. Knowing what her fate will be, she needs some pithy last words for the crowds. Ginn’s sheer chutzpah makes her a riot to watch.
Later dubbed l’ange de l’assasinat (The Angel of Assasination) Corday determined to kill Jean-Paul Marat. As the editor of L’Ami du peuple (The Friend of the People) Marat stoked the fires that led to the September Massacres during the Reign of Terror. In her last words, she asserted that she killed one man to save 100,000, honestly thinking that his death would bring peace to France. (Address to the French people, friends of Law and Peace.) It didn’t.
Lisel Gorell-Getz gracefully waltzes in as the elaborately dressed nitwit, Marie-Antoinette. History is painting a poor picture of her and she demands a rewrite. She insists that she never said, “Let them eat cake,” of the starving masses. This is probably true, but her rap sheet of excesses is long enough without it.
Cashae Monya plays a composite character, Marianne Angelle. Based on many Afro-Caribbean women living in Paris, she embodies the failure of the Republic to fully live up to its ideals, denying people like her their freedom and equality. As always, Cashae is articulate, poised and fierce in her righteous indignation. The comic wit takes a sharp, intense turn to tragedy as these women’s lives were cut short by “Madame Guillotine.” And yet, they never lose their humor, even in the gallows. But that’s where they need it most.
If you’re looking for a thinker’s night out, a raucous comedy mixed with tragedy, and a history lesson you should have learned in school but probably didn’t, come see Moxie Theatre’s The Revolutionists playing through June 25.
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Tauber is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts. He may be contacted via eric.tauber@sdjewishworld.com