Glitz and guillotine: Steppenwolf revisits 'Marie Antoinette'
You can track the declining fortunes of the titular character in David Adjmi's modern, pseudo-historical "Marie Antoinette" by the diminishing height of her hair and heels.
We first meet the French queen - played with brio in Steppenwolf Theatre's production by the ingenious, indefatigable Alana Arenas - as a shallow, twentysomething spendthrift strolling a runway, the perfect place for an 18th-century fashionista. She sports bedazzled platform shoes and a sky-high blonde pompadour topped by a slightly askew miniature crown. Dressed in a lace T-shirt with "Boss" emblazoned in rhinestones and a flouncy skirt made up of yards of pink tulle accented with fabric flowers, Marie ambles alongside her splendidly attired entourage, played by Tamberla Perry and Ericka Ratcliff.
But when director Robert O'Hara's production concludes a brisk two hours later, the doomed queen - sans wig but stylishly dressed in crimson and black - wears flats and her hair has been shorn for her appointment with the guillotine.
In Adjmi's examination of the creation and dismantling of a celebrity, even the brightest butterfly is disposable. That goes for the 18th-century queen as well as the 21st-century starlet.
Lindsay Jones' pulsating dance-club soundtrack and Clint Ramos' fashion runway-inspired set provide a kind of anachronistic flair. Ramos' mirrored finishes suggest Versailles' Hall of Mirrors, conjured along with other royal residences by Jeff Sugg's projections. Framed by lights that suggest a theater marque, the projections themselves reflect shadowy versions of the actors, another reminder that public figures are never really out of the public eye.
That's certainly true for Marie Antoinette. (Although one can't blame her showing off designer Dede M. Ayite's gorgeous, playful costumes and Dave Bova's delectable wigs and makeup.)
Married at 14 to Louis XVI to cement a political alliance, Austria's archduchess was always the outsider, subjected to scandal and gossip, not all of it true - a point O'Hara's nontraditional casting reinforces. (The director's decision to have African-American women play the female characters while Caucasian men play the adult male characters underscores a power imbalance that persists today.)
Insulated, indulged, poorly educated, Marie Antoinette was raised to be a queen and trained for nothing else. She was, as Adjmi's play suggests, a product of her upbringing and therefore a victim of circumstances. The result is that "Marie Antoinette" - a cautionary tale that tends toward the obvious - often feels like an apology, with Marie's mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, shouldering the blame for her daughter's plight. That it's revealed in one of the play's most gripping scenes (ferociously acted by Arenas, O'Hara's greatest weapon), doesn't make up for what is a simplistic and not entirely convincing charge.
Moreover, it's not entirely Maria Theresa's fault. The cult of celebrity is sustained by our willingness to embrace and indulge it because we love the spectacle or, as O'Hara so aptly describes in his program notes, "the train wreck."
The Marie we encounter initially is a shallow young woman, fluent in Valley-speak and conscious of the public gaze who uses her position to justify her indulgences.
"I'm in competition with everyone," she says by way of explanation.
She is oblivious to her subjects' poverty and their resentment of her extravagance, which she fails to curb despite the pleas from her sweet, easily distracted and impotent husband Louis (fine work by Tim Hopper). She ignores similar warnings from Swedish diplomat Axel Fersen (an urbane, unsettling Ariel Shafir), her brother, Emperor Joseph (Keith D. Gallagher), and even a well-meaning talking Sheep. Played by Alan Wilder, the hipster ruminant inhabits the rustic hamlet Marie builds at Versailles so that she plays at being a peasant with ladies-in-waiting Perry and Ratcliff, whose shared glances reveal how well they understand what it means to feed the queen's ego.
By the second act, the party's over. The French Revolution is fully underway. The royal family is imprisoned by the rebels, epitomized by Tim Frank whose bloodthirsty pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity is every bit as brutal and oppressive as anything the former ruling class conceived.
Meanwhile Marie morphs from Valley Girl to harridan to victim, emerging with a kind of self-awareness. But even that goes only so far. Despite the best efforts of the canny Arenas, an actress capable of great depth, Marie remains very much a superficial character. I suppose that's the point, although it keeps us at arm's length emotionally, so the play never really grips us. Still, Arenas, who's onstage for most of the play's two hours, delivers a bravura performance as a celebrity past her time.
“Marie Antoinette”
★ ★ ★
Location: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St., Chicago, (312) 335-1650,
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday through May 10. Also 2 p.m. April 22, 29 and May 6. No 7:30 p.m. shows April 26, May 3 and 10
Running time: About two hours, with intermission
Tickets: $20-$86
Parking: Metered street parking; $10 at the Steppenwolf garage
Rating: For adults; contains mature themes, strong language