The Glorious French Revolution at the New Diorama Theatre – review

What’s the French for “throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks”? That’s the best way to describe The Glorious French Revolution, hit theatre company YESYESNONO’s new piece opening at the New Diorama Theatre in north London.

The New Diorama has a strong history of platforming both emerging artists and tongue-in-cheek dalliances with history (it was where Operation Mincemeat started out, after all), so this offering, stewarded to the stage by Sam Ward (who had one of the Edinburgh Fringe’s most assured hits with Nation) feels true to form.

This sadly doesn’t have the same enigmatic verve that that Nation pulled off. Told with deliberately irreverent broad brushstrokes, audiences are taken from 1788 through to the simmering horror of the the Great Terror and beyond. Aside from the bewildered and bewilderingly obtuse King Louis XVI, most characters are not named, and cardboard signs demarcate different social strata.

The five-strong cast, wearing French sportswear, are gung-ho as they rattle through 90 minutes of social upheaval – as order and disorder crash down like tidal waves. There’s some fantastic creative choices from time to time: Tom Foskett-Barnes’ music is sublime, while an extended passage about the storming of the Bastille and the murder of the marquis de Launay (told as if by a sports pundit) perfectly blends absurdism and visceral tragedy.

Sadly, by ponderously going through the motions early on, the grittier, juicier meat of Ward’s thesis takes too long to arrive. Do all revolutions simply go around in circles? Will tyranny always rear its head in one form or another? How loud does change really need to be? Each question is tossed into the air and only occasionally swatted back to us. Performances are committed yet by necessity have to be so hammy that the tone infrequently shifts.

It all just about comes together in a wordless yet largely coherent ending as the cast turn infantile japes into silent, determined action. While a bougie dinner party plays out offstage (the blurb tells us that this is set in Davos during the final meetings of the 2024 World Economic Forum), Ward’s text subtly covers the sweep of centuries of modern history – as well as suggesting ideas perhaps more profoundly stirring for the present day. It may need some cuts, but something piquant occasionally rears its head.