Media Archive

 The American Repertory Theater, in a co-production with Yale Repertory Theatre, presents the world premiere of David Adjmi’s tragicomedy Marie Antoinette at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge. Staged on a colorful plexiglass set designed by Riccardo Hernandez (who also designed The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess), with stunning costumes and wigs by Gabriel Berry, Adjmi’s highly entertaining telling of the French Queen’s story takes its fair share of liberties with history, but displays obvious parallels between the economic inequality of her time and ours as we teeter on the brink of an important election. 

 Brooke Bloom gives a spectacular performance as France’s former first lady in David Adjmi’s often silly yet insightful play.  Abetted by a smart director and crack design team — including Riccardo Hernandez, whose set design is an exercise in impactful minimalism — Adjmi has crafted a confection that’s all sugar on the surface, with harder-to-ingest messages concealed within.

Bloom’s Marie comes across as more oblivious than mean-spirited, a pawn in a deadly, rapidly unfolding contest she can’t recognize or understand, much less play with any real skill. A measure of self-awareness does eventually dawn, but by then it’s far too late. The luxury-loving queen has become a despised symbol to the bloody-minded revolutionaries whose ostensible goal is “Liberty, equality, fraternity,’’ and the guillotine awaits.

Karole Armitage jettisoned her sobriquet as the “punk ballerina” years ago, but the Tony-nominated former Merce Cunningham dancer continues her edgy choreographic foray with her contributions to the upcoming world premiere of playwright David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette, a coproduction of the American Repertory Theater and the Yale Repertory Theatre.

“FINISH THIS SENTENCE: BY THE YEAR 1793, I HOPE TO BE…” Brooke Bloom as Marie answered some questions for the Phoenix. Check it out.

The topic of income inequality is very much in the air these days at the American Repertory Theater, where David Adjmi’s “Marie Antoinette,” a tragicomedy about the ignominious one-percenter, is in rehearsals for its world premiere. . . . While Adjmi’s Marie is a spectacularly overindulged naïf, he doesn’t condemn her for her ignorance or for privilege so excessive that when she had a faux hamlet constructed for her amusement at Versailles, she played shepherdess there to perfumed sheep. Or so the story goes.

 BAAA! David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette negotiates hairpin turns among satire, low comedy, surrealism,and dark night of the soul before delivering a haunting wake-up call. 

 At the very start of the American Repertory Theatre’s New England premiere of David Adjmi’s “Marie Antoinette” the queen herself, played by Brooke Bloom, sits flanked by two noble companions. All three are equipped with fantastically high wigs; all three are attired in pastel-hued dresses (just one of costume designer Gabriel Berry’s many triumphs here). They are dainty, and even delectable, to behold; they look like nothing so much as a neatly packaged assortment of macaroons, and scenic designer Riccardo Hernandez has created a perfect little jewel box to contain their rarefied and often trivial existence.

Harvard President Drew Faust will host a panel discussion with the alumni behind the groundbreaking opera “Nixon in China” as part of Harvard’s 375th anniversary celebration on Nov. 15 at the American Repertory Theater with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams, director Peter Sellars, and librettist Alice Goodman.