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Ellie Piercy as Elodie in Glyn Maxwell’s Liberty |
Revolution a colourful tale
LIBERTY
Shakespeare’s Globe
CHOU EN-LAI, that most sophisticated of China’s Communist leaders, is reported to have said to a journalist in the 1950s that “it was too early to say what was the effect of the French Revolution of 1789”.
Glyn Maxwell has taken Anatole France’s The Gods Are Thirsty and retold the effect of the “Reign of Terror” in September 1793-July 1794 on four friends.
The old regime was toppled in 1789; in January, 1793, Louis XVI was executed.
The French were seized with euphoria. Now in May 1793, the four meet for a picnic in the countryside outside Paris.
Evarriste Gamelein (David Sturzaker) is a painter who becomes a zealous magistrate who succumbs to the need for terror in order to guarantee the principles of liberty, equality, fraternity, and the noble sentiments enshrined in Rights of Man.
Inexorably, his pretty wife, Elodie (Ellie Piercy), mutates into a revolutionary automaton while Rose, an actress, and her gentle aristocratic companion, Maurice (John Bett), are swallowed as “the revolution devours its children”. Evarriste’s idealism and commitment never lessens, even as his mentor, Robespierre, is himself led to the overworked guillotine.
Evarriste justifies his own execution, crying “he is glad to be sacrificed to a just future”. He believes that a better world will follow this necessary and barbaric bloody path.
Glyn Maxwell, a poet, has written it in verse. There are laughs, although a stern morality disturbs because of its contemporary resonance: when civil liberties and constitutional governments are challenged or airily brushed aside.
It may not stir you like Les Miserables, but it should worry you, with its resounding
challenge, delivered
by a handful of fine young actors.
Until October 4
CNJ Booking Line
0870 040 0070 |
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