“You’d be mad to miss it”
This production was performed at The QEH Theatre, Bristol and The Wroughton Theatre, Bath
Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade is a play within a play. It is gory and violent and visually shocking while presenting a complex and challenging set of ideas.
The 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 - or Marat/Sade, for short, is considered by many to be a theatrical marvel of the 20th-century. The audience is in the place of the 19th-century French bourgeoisie spectators who attended plays in insane asylums where inmates would act out dramas as part of their therapy.
The year is 1808 and the infamous Marquis de Sade has been imprisoned in the asylum of Charenton for endangering public morals. He has written a play depicting the murder 15 years earlier, at the height of the French Revolution, of the revolutionary thinker and leader Jean-Paul Marat. The play is performed in front of an invited audience that includes Coulmier, director of Charenton, accompanied by his wife, but Monsieur Coulmier is unsettled by the Marquis's vicious social commentary.
Marat/Sade is a wild celebration of insanity, a terrifying pageant bursting with colour and music. Peter Weiss's award-winning play pits two of the world's monstrous intellects against each other, asking contemporary questions about the aesthetics of resistance.
Cast:
Rehearsal Photographs:
