Gamm’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ is flashy, funny and fearless

Pictured from left to right: Amanda Ruggiero (Therese De Lamballe),  Madeleine Lambert (Marie Antoinette), Casey Seymour Kim (Yolande De Polignac). Photo: Peter Goldberg
Pictured from left to right: Amanda Ruggiero (Therese De Lamballe), Madeleine Lambert (Marie Antoinette), Casey Seymour Kim (Yolande De Polignac). Photo: Peter Goldberg

By Kim Kalunian, WPRO News 

Powdered wigs, f-bombs and imaginary sheep. You get them all in David Adjmi’s “Marie Antoinette,” now on stage at the Gamm.

The slick, 90-minute production is infused with terrific theatrical moments thanks to the keen eye of director Rachel Walshe. Plus, the cast is stellar.

At the helm is Madeleine Lambert, who’s no stranger to playing ill-fated, doomed-to-be-beheaded queens. She was wonderful as “Anne Boleyn” in Gamm’s 2013 production of the play, also under the direction of Walshe. In “Marie Antoinette,” as the script dictates, she’s allowed to give the queen a much more modern flare, tossing “like” into her sentences and dropping at least a dozen f-bombs.

In Adjmi’s telling, Marie is funny. She’s likeable. She’s over-the-top but it’s all in good fun. With all the comedy (and perhaps all the self-pity) in this particular role, Lambert reminds me of a young Lucille Ball, hamming it up as “the queen” to an unseen Desi Arnaz’ chagrin. It might sound like a nightmare, but for whatever reason, it works.MA_3_press

At Lambert’s side are Amanda Ruggiero and Casey Seymour Kim, Antoinette’s semi-friends who seem more interested in bonbons and petit fours than anything Marie has to say. Both Ruggiero and Seymour Kim are chameleons in this play, switching into several different rolls. Seymour Kim in particular shows off her prowess as a character actress, often making one-word lines speak volumes through nuance and expression. It’s a delight to watch.

Jed Hancock Brainerd is perfectly suited for his role of Marie’s husband, Louis XVI. At each turn – whether it’s talk of his incessant tinkering, his malfunctioning penis or his duties as King – he seems about ready to jump out of his skin.

And so we have the folks that Marie is constantly surrounded by: a husband who’s not much of a lover or a king, and friends who are not so much friends as they are leeches. Adjmi does a nice job of painting Marie as the victim, and I found myself rooting for her, even though I knew my efforts would be futile.

MA_5_pressThe show whizzes by in a frenzy of color, tongue-in-cheek dialogue (“Let’s not lose our heads!” during an argument, or “Let them eat cake!” when a friend asks Marie about feeding her kids junk) and carefully choreographed staging. As the descent of Marie begins to go into freefall, we’re revisited by Alec Thibodeau, who plays an imaginary sheep that Marie conjures from her imagination three times in the play. The sheep is a harbinger of doom that, in one of the stranger moments of the show, turns on Marie and – in a dream – mauls her. I wonder if the show would suffer without the sheep, but Thibodeau does a fine job tackling the odd role.

While the show is mostly fun, fluffy and fast-paced, the end has some gut-wrenching, thought-provoking moments, especially when Marie is re-visited in a dream by her confidant Axel Fersen, played by Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella). The conversation with Fersen turns to the revolution and the riots – the masses don’t want absolute power. Ferson assures the queen there is no such thing as equality and democracy – “It’s just a diversion!” he insists – and with what’s been happening across the U.S. as of llate, it’s a moment that resonated deeply.

“Marie Antoinette” is a show that left me feeling fully satisfied. It tickled my funny bone, satiated my appetite for high-fashion and even higher wigs, and even gave me something to think about. And that’s really all I can ask for.

“Marie Antoinette” runs now through May 31 at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket. Click here for more information.

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