The Massacre

Synopsis

Following the spectacular success of last year’s production of Mrs Inchbald’s sparkling comedy Wives as they Were, and Maids as they Are, her only tragedy is now given its première European professional production, more than two hundred years after it was written. The play is inspired by the horrific events of the French Revolution and is a tragic exploration of war and of questions of justice, mercy or retribution in its aftermath. Felt to be too controversial to be staged in her own time, even its author accepted that - "from the time that I first undertook the foregoing scenes, I never flattered myself that they would be proper to appear on the stage. The subject is so horrid, that I thought it would shock, rather than give satisfaction, to an audience. Still, I found it so truly tragic in the essential springs of terror and pity, that I could not resist the impulse of adapting it to the stage." The play retains its power to this day and the tale of the family Tricastin and their tragic demise is as provocative and disturbing as it was when it was first suppressed - by its own author.

Our Review:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 24 June 2009

Audiences are not made up from stupid people. They can work out historical and cultural reasons for themselves, whether these concern horrors of a distant past in far-away places or modern violence much nearer to home. They don’t, in short, need to have it all spelled out for them.

When Elizabeth Inchbald began work on The Massacre in October 1792 the news of the September Massacres in revolutionary Paris in which around 1,200 people were killed had just filtered through to London. The new play was one of her adaptations, a French drama of 1772 by Mercier about the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre two hundred years before. Colin Blumenau’s staging is its European professional première; Inchbald withdrew it before production because the subject and its newly contemporary context were just too politically sensitive.

We live in a period where massacres of the innocent and swathes of genocide are all too familiar. Blumenau’s production...

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Latest User Review

susan bank - 25 June 2009:

it is Magdalena KLESZCZ....

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