Post by Eric Murphy.
The title says it all: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.
If the name has your head spinning, let me explain. Marat/Sade is a play within a play. In it, University of Ottawa actors play inmates who are putting on their own performance. This apparently, is the way an “enlightened” insane asylum helps its residents let off steam. The lunatics’ subject is the death of Jean-Paul Marat, the French revolutionary who was murdered in his bathtub (think the painting The Death of Marat).
Although Marat’s iconic bathtub takes centre stage throughout Marat/Sade, the entire set is gorgeously grimy. Everything is stained, from the floorboards to the white-sheet backdrop. Red, white, and blue flags hang overhead and there are tethers waiting at the back to restrain unruly actors. The band members are right on the stage, cluttered together in a giant wire cage.
You can spot the same eye for detail in the inmates themselves. The actors all sport an unhealthy pallor and most wear enough eye shadow to make each glance haunting. The guards’ clothes are covered in bloodstains and the four singers wear brightly-coloured sashes and cockades to stand out from the other inmates in their white gowns.
The macabre aesthetic’s only drawback is that when things get frantic, as they often do, the stage can start to seem like the set of a zombie film. Make no mistake though, Marat/Sade is the best looking university performance I’ve ever seen.
The acting is appropriately over the top. Some inmates shriek their dialogue while others fall asleep halfway through a line. Each inmate has their own individual symptoms, from the assassin who’s too tired to hold up a knife to the sexual deviant who can’t stop groping her skirts. Some of the inmates’ tics can become a little distracting though, especially when they’re acting out during one of Marat or de Sade’s sweeping monologues. The payoff is that you can always find some interesting detail to focus on.
Standout performances include Paul Piekoszewski’s brooding delivery of Marquis De Sade, the inmates’ director who occasionally steps in to verbally torture Marat. The doomed bather himself is expertly played by Jérémie Cyr-Cooke, whose booming voice switches between authority and anguish at a moment’s notice.
Cooke’s character is simultaneously the most powerful and most vulnerable inmate. He spends most of the play scratching in his bath and looking to be on the verge of death. Occasionally though, he leaps out of his porcelain coffin with a presence that fills the entire auditorium. This contrast delivers some of Marat/Sade’s most satisfying moments.
The script, penned in the 1960s by German writer Peter Weiss, provides an eloquent backbone to the often manic acting. The music can be harsh, it is being performed by insane people after all, but when the singers’ voices fall into harmony they contrast wondrously against the well manicured desolation around them.
Each of these elements come together to produce a play that is shockingly dark but spectacular to watch. Make sure you see it before the lights go out on Charenton Asylum for good.
Marat/Sade runs nightly at 8pm at the University of Ottawa Academic Hall until February 28th. Tickets are $20, $10 for students and seniors. For more information, click here.
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