It’s been a tough past five years for Park Square Theatre. The company that’s been a downtown St. Paul mainstay since 1972 has struggled to find its footing since the retirement of longtime artistic director Richard Cook in 2018, the ink in its books becoming a deeper red.
As all theaters went dark during COVID, the company held out hope for presenting Lauren Gunderson’s “The Revolutionists.” Twice scheduled for 2020, it’s at last found its way to Park Square’s Proscenium Stage.
Yet it feels like the lone survivor in a theatrical tragedy, as it’s surrounded by cancellations on the calendar: two shows before it and three afterward. The current staging will close Park Square’s 2022-23 season while the company regroups and seeks financial stability.
As with three of the four shows Park Square will have presented this season, “The Revolutionists” is a co-production with another local company, in this case PRIME Productions. And it’s quite an admirable effort, one that stands up well alongside some of Park Square’s most adventurous offerings. In many respects, it’s the best kind of history play, one that makes the past feel prescient and inspires you to re-examine what you’ve learned.
It’s also a lively exploration of the places where art and reality intersect and often collide. “The Revolutionists” is set in 1793 France, where the overthrow of the monarchy has given way to a brutal bloodletting that history has come to call “the Reign of Terror.” We see it through the eyes of four women, three of them actual historical figures, the other a composite. They are a playwright, an assassin, a Caribbean equal rights activist, and the former queen, Marie Antoinette.
Oh, and … it’s a comedy. Playwright Gunderson has filled her witty script with a lot of decidedly 21st-century banter. Yes, much of it is gallows humor — or, rather, guillotine humor — but there was much laughter at the performance I attended, especially during the briskly paced first act. That’s when it becomes clear that this is something of a “meta” play, in which writer Olympe de Gouges converses with her characters and creates the onstage story.
The most fascinating among the four women is Jane Froiland’s kooky but charismatic Marie Antoinette. She’s come to de Gouges seeking a more sympathetic posterity, hoping that she can be portrayed in one of her plays as a kinder soul than the woman who said “Let them eat cake,” or at worst a victim of her circumstances. Gunderson makes a convincing case for that, an underlying theme of “The Revolutionists” being that women’s voices get drowned out when men decide that vengeance and violence are the answer to their problems.
Subscribing to the latter notion is Jasmine Porter’s knife-wielding Charlotte Corday, who silenced the voice of the Reign of Terror, Jean-Paul Marat. Her viewpoint is weighed in the debates of the best way forward, with playwright de Gouges (Alison Edwards) choosing to wage war with words about the rights of women and Marianne Angelle (Tia Marie Tanzer) trying to make sure that the cause of the abolition of slavery doesn’t get lost in the conflict-fueled cacophony.
While Froiland’s Marie is impeccable, I wish that director Shelli Place had asked the other actors to bring more energy, detail and confidence to their portrayals. Nevertheless, it’s a play well worth experiencing, one that stirs both mind and heart.
Park Square Theatre and PRIME Productions’ ‘The Revolutionists’
- When: Through April 16
- Where: Park Square Theatre, 20 W. Seventh Place, St. Paul
- Tickets: $55-$16, available at 651-291-7005 or parksquaretheatre.org
- Capsule: A thought-provoking comedy about deciding how to change the world.
Rob Hubbard can be reached at [email protected].
