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Synopsis Paris, 1792. The French Revolution is four years old when ambitious young artist, Gamelin, discovers he has been made a magistrate for the ruling forces. Believing the Revolution divides the world between good and evil, he sees conspiracy and corruption everywhere. How strong will the ties of love and friendship prove when Gamelin is given power over life and death, as the new order plunges with terrifying momentum from high idealism to bloody mob rule? Private jealousies and public fears, old alliances and new ideologies all combine in this thrilling adaptation of Anatole France's 1912 novel Les Dieux ont Soif. Award-winning poet, playwright and novelist, Glyn Maxwell, brings a colloquial verse of great fluidity and immediacy to a story that is both fresh and relevant. World Premiere at The Globe Theatre Part of the Totus Mundus Season. Totus mundus agit histrionem is thought to have been the motto of the first Globe - 'The whole world is a playhouse'
If you really want to know what it’s like to feel trapped, not to say incarcerated, in a theatre, go see Liberty by Glyn Maxwell. It’s a punishing, mostly incomprehensible verse play about a group of revolutionaries during the Reign of Terror, based on a 1912 novel by Anatole France called Les Dieux sont Soif - and most of us felt sympathetically parched by the interval.
It manages to make one of the most exciting and dangerous periods in European history sound like a tea party in Theydon Bois. Which is more or less how the play begins: at a picnic in the countryside outside Paris in 1793, a few months after the execution of Louis XVI. Robespierre is in charge of a committee of public safety and Marie Antoinette is in prison.
Unfortunately, the struggling artist Evariste Gamelin (David Sturzaker) is not locked up with her, but free to bore us rigid with his take-away idealism and half-baked oratory. Gamelin becomes a repressive magistrate and supporter of state violence, though it’s hard to follow, and then swallow, how this comes about and why we should care that it does.
His girlfriend Elodie Blaise (Ellie Piercy), shy enough to be re-christened “Modesty” perhaps – is a humble seamstress continuously upstaged by an overbearing actress, Rose Clebert (Belinda Lang), who’s a butt for a stream of humour-free references to the National Theatre.
By the second act, Evariste is apparently closing down the newspapers and the theatres while an eccentric old duke, Maurice Brotteaux (John Bett), takes to puppetry with about as much success as I would take to unicycling on a trapeze with a fire-eating dwarf on my head. Why director Guy Retallack hasn’t cut this farrago by ninety minutes and given us a salon-style comedy of visionary revolutionaries – “The Importance of Seeing Unrest”? – is a mystery as impenetrable as most of the dialogue.
Actually, Maxwell’s not so mighty sickle and hammer are wielded in limp and turgid verse, or so it would appear from a glance at the script. There is no discernible metre, nor any fizz, bounce or beat to the relentless triviality of the dull lines. There’s a couple of chorus numbers and rumbling tumbrel en route to the guillotine, but nothing that doesn’t make you yearn for a revival of Danton’s Death or a return visit to Les Miserables.
The depth and complexity of the verse has clearly demanded too much from your reviewer. The acting was superb, the audience was riveted and I shared the sense of being of being in the presence of a genius that sounded so old and was yet no new ... - Anthony Sycamore
08 Sep 08
How disappointing that a respected reviewer should miss the point and detail of Glyn Maxwell's "Liberty" at the Globe - not least in that he doesn't even match the right actors to their characters. This casual indifference informs his whole commentary. - Karen Archer
A rebuild of Shakespeare's original Globe theatre close to the original site. Society of London Theatre member. Note: Booking opened March 3rd 1996. Tickets for performances range from £5 (standing in the yard) to £37.50 for the best gallery seats). Induction loop facilities. Wheelchair facilities. Extensive education programme. Restaurant, cafe and bar. Dark during the winter but the museum and venue remain open. One of the few London venues with Sunday performances. The Globe Theatre Season runs from April to October. The Globe Education Centre is located in Park Street and runs an educational autumn season.
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