It is rare that a reviewer gets to review a playwright’s work back-to-back unless a theatre company stages a celebration of their work. Lauren Gunderson is a bit young for such a theatrical celebration of her work, although she has written over 20 plays and is one of the top 20 produced playwrights in America. Last week I reviewed a production of her play The Book of Will, staged by Pasadena’s A Noise Within. This week I am reviewing her fiercely feminist take on the French Revolution, The Revolutionists, being produced by Beverly Hills’s Theatre 40 as part of their 56th season.
Gunderson’s work heavily focuses on female figures in history, science and literature. In The Revolutionists, she has gathered four very disparate women from French history and placed them in sisterhood and in danger during the waning days of The Reign of Terror. Feminist playwright Olympe de Gouges (Kat Kemmet) is suffering writer’s block and can’t seem to get started writing a new play. Olympe championed the revolution at first but soured on it when égalité only referred to men and did not grant women equal rights. Saint-Domingue rebel activist Marianne Angelle (Ashlee Olivia) visits, asking Olympe to aid the cause of revolution on her Caribbean Island by writing political pamphlets. They are soon interrupted by the young and fiery Charlotte Corday (Sami Stumman), who needs some last words to say as she plans to assassinate Jean-Paul Marat, the author of a thousand deaths, as he soaks in his bath. Late to the party but adding to the hilarity is the recently deposed Queen Marie-Antoinette (Meghan Lloyd), desperately seeking a rewrite of her life. These women share their deepest feelings and bond, the Queen even sharing her beloved ribbons, as one by one they eventually end up on the scaffold.
Although the shadow of Madame Guillotine hangs over these women, the play contains a lot of laughs, with Lloyd’s Marie providing the bulk of them. She delivers the goods as the flighty monarch comes closer to accepting the reality around her. Kemmet provides a solid center to the action, her Olympe is dedicated to the cause, to the written word and to her new friends. Stumman is a little spitfire as Corday and Olivia (with her Eartha Kitt-like voice) is heroic and stalwart and always dignified. Director Melanie MacQueen has deftly guided her cast through the comedy and tragedy of their lives. Michael Mullen’s detailed period costumes are a great asset to the production. The Revolutionists is a feminist history lesson and a laugh riot and well worth seeing.
www.theatre40.org