Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette prances around in a bikini that definitely didn’t exist in 1776 France. She golfs. She does drugs. She spews curse words. She yells at her husband, Louis, for being an idiot.
“Sometimes, I feel like a game other people play without me,” she says in Marie Antoinette, the play running at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington.
And throughout it all — through her fall from top of the food chain to the scum of Paris — she becomes irresistibly relatable.
Written by David Adjmi and running at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company until Oct. 12, Marie Antoinette modernizes the “Let them eat cake” tale, giving warning to people about the haunting ways in which popular ideas consume us all.
There are takeaway themes for people of any age: Don’t be vain. Be aware. Be kind. But it resonates deeply for young people such as college students, who are still forming identities in an age of selfies and “me” generation — being so self-absorbed so young can lead to a life cut short.
Woolly is known nationally for its experimental theater, and Marie Antoinette is no different. For its opening night, the theater’s lobby was decorated with themed activities, including a guillotine photo booth (called a “photo op with yer head”) and a head toss to try to score points (the heads are Barbie doll heads).
At the start of the show, the stage is draped with lavish pink curtains and greenery. It’s only as the show progresses and Marie starts to lose her mind that the silver guillotine hanging in the middle of the stage becomes noticeable: an ominous warning for the young queen.
The play’s shift from the lavish exuberance of the young queen and her carefree lifestyle to the haunting revolution is magical. Everything on the stage lends itself to the horrific transformation: the clocks that Louis tinkers with, signaling the passing of time; Marie’s tall wigs that disappear, leaving her with only a buzz cut; and the sheep that follows Marie, which eventually turns into a skeleton.
“Oh my god,” Marie says, late in the play. “This is a comedy.”
The play does seem to drag on a bit after the intermission, but that’s possibly purposeful; slowing down the pace creates an effective juxtaposition against the jaunty vibe of the first act.
Kimberly Gilbert’s Marie is a show-stealer as the title character, and her transformation to insanity was believable and harrowing. Adjmi’s script is contemporary and witty, and when paired with director Yury Urnov’s sense of pacing and eerie atmosphere, the production works as a neat package. It’s a compelling, 200-year-old biography that keeps its modern audience on the edge of its seats.
Perhaps the saddest notion in the play comes toward the end, when Marie realizes that without the throne and without her ability to spend, she is nothing. She has no education, no notion of democracy and no way to save herself.
So she sits, alone, wigless and in an unflattering dress on a barren stage at the end of the play, a reminder of the way the world can consume us all.
Marie Antoinette runs Wednesdays through Sundays at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington until Oct. 12. Visit woollymammoth.net for show times and tickets.
