Word: sade
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...herd of flustered souls, is the first and most grievous wrong. It is a commonplace of Shakespearean criticism to say that some of the characters in Twelfth Night act so cruel that they seem insane, but that is no license to turn the play into a cut-rate Marat-Sade. To interpret the play that way is to say, "Be calm, audience, real people are nice. You have to be bonkers to be vicious." The audience should not be allowed to rest so easy...
...PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE. Under the direction of Peter Brook, Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company has successfully transformed Peter Weiss's hit play into a cinematic rowdydow no less frazzle-dazzling than it was on the stage...
Time: 1808. Place: a bathhouse in the asylum where Sade spent the last 13 years of his life-and actually did write plays for the inmates to perform. Playwright Weiss supposes that Sade once wrote a drama in the form of a debate between himself and the great demagogue of the French Revolution. Marat (Ian Richardson) stands for social progress; he believes that the only way to improve people is to improve the society they live in, that violent revolution is the best way to begin. Sade (Patrick Magee) stands on the contrary for moral autarchy; he believes that...
...debate bristles with modern implications, but in intellectual terms it is platitudinous and inconclusive. "The play's chief aim," Sade observes, "has been to take to bits Great Propositions and their opposites." On the emotional plane, however, there is no doubt about who wins. The inmates set up a mad clamor for Marat's cause. Drooling, twitching, cross-eyed, filthy, they stagger about the stage like broken bugs. "We want our revolution," they croak in cracked chorus...
...message of Marat / Sade seems to be that bourgeois society is a madhouse, and anybody who lives in it must be out of his mind. In the talented hands of Weiss and Brook, there is dramatic power in an idea whose time has passed...