“Sigh. Gasp. Retort. Sometimes I say them, instead of doing them.”  – The Revolutionists’ Marie Antoinette (a sparkling, scene-stealing anarchic aristocrat in the delightfully daffy hands of Melissa Beckwith)

 

In a genius bit of cross-promotion, the Huron Valley Humane Society (which is as much animal advocacy organization as top rate animal shelter) partnered with Theatre Nova to hold (on August 24) a benefit preview of Theatre Nova’s latest offering The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson – a play as much about finding your voice in collaboration and commiseration with like-minded individuals facing the same wall of apathy, antipathy, and alienation as it is a time-bound period piece exploring the exigencies of the French Revolution.

(Needless to say, the packed house of Greater Ann Arbor animal advocates left the theatre fired up, galvanized, and inspired.)

Like Clutter, another entry this season at Theatre Nova, The Revolutionists is both memory play and call-to-action with a nice slathering of meta-absurdity across its surface. Playwright Gunderson brings together four women (some historical figures, some composites) in one small room at the height of France’s Reign of Terror to discuss their truths, their narratives, their plights as free-thinking women in a society that seeks revolution and equity but not when it comes to the distaff side of society. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Literally. (Bernie Bros, anyone? Too soon?)

The aforementioned Marie Antoinette, Caribbean revolutionary Marianne Angelle (a grounded, heartbreaking, and damn funny K. Edmonds), and Jean-Paul Marat’s assassin Charlotte Corday (a fiery, spiky, compelling Sara Rose) find themselves in the chambers of playwright Olympe De Gouges (a fabulously neurotic Diane Hill … channeling just a hint of Hillary’s steely resolve?), seeking a writer to help them finish their stories. It is unlikely that these women would have ever interacted IRL (“in real life,” as the kids say), but Gunderson has great fun imagining what might have transpired. For example, she rehabilitates and humanizes Antoinette as a 1% victim of misunderstood and misrepresented intention (the heroine of Stephen Schwartz’ classic ditty “Meadowlark” if played by Carol Kane), never quite letting her off the hook for her tone-deaf excess. It’s a marvelous hat trick, aided and abetted by Beckwith’s revelatory performance.

Director David Wolber has stacked the deck with a to-die-for cast (in fact, most of them do meet the guillotine at some point – or multiple points – during the show), and he wisely let’s them run like hell with their roles, shaping and pacing the narrative for maximum funny and maximum heartache.

The challenges facing these women in 1793 aren’t terribly different from those facing women in 2017, and that’s a damn shame. The language is purposefully anachronistic, and Wolber’s staging – coupled with the dreamlike design of Daniel C. Walker (lighting), Carla Milarch (sound … seriously, download right now the equally anachronistic, breathtaking pop songs by French group L.E.J. which are used interstitially and at intermission), and Forrest Hejkal (set, costumes, props, hair) – smartly positions the play as an allegorical comic nightmare, cautioning us that history sure as hell repeats itself. As Cordray warns her compatriots at a moment when they seem to be sliding into fearful ambivalence and losing their collective moral compass, “It’s called the Reign of Terror, not the Reign of Agree-to-Disagree.” Touché.

The Revolutionists runs at Theatre Nova through September 17. Don’t miss it. Tickets at www.TheatreNOVA.org

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language