Big wigs and bigger thinking in Freefall's 'Marie Antoinette'

This production does so much more, however, than render a lively version of history. There's a visually arresting continuous palette of color. There's a running montage of video imagery that either represents events of the French Revolution and an abundance of luxury or speaks to the constructs of Marie's mind. And there are some very solid performances in leading roles. It all combines for as serious a statement as you're likely to find on topics that will strike many as timely, even presciently so.
                                                   

The show, directed by Freefall producing artistic director Eric Davis, aims to capture events accurately (time stamps are helpfully projected, along with imagery of the late 18th century) while playfully interjecting elements from today. Costume designer David Covach made the most of his opportunity to do more than clothe actors. The flowing gowns and breeches and accoutrements are spectacular, but so are the cotton-candy bouffant hairstyles of the royal ladies (a young Marie, who carries the enthusiasm and resentments of a precocious teenager, and her girlfriends, wearing neon-loud wigs by Parker Lawhorne), a T-shirt with a "Keep calm" bromide, and the black leather get-up of a muscular young prison guard (Haulston Mann) with whom she's having an affair. Lighting by Cody Basham and thumping contemporary pop music establish a club mood, all to buttress the effect of throwing history and the present into a blender.

Yet this play celebrates neither relativism nor revolution; it examines the people caught up in social and political movements. It offers a well-drawn glimpse into Marie, who needles her husband ("Has it ever occurred to you to run France?") and laments the childhood she never had, including a mother who "spied on me, punished and exhorted me and never raised me."

Megan Therese Rippey is well cast as Marie, who lands a supple depiction of an alert but uneducated woman whose true nobility shines once she is stripped of her crown. Lucas Wells complements her strong personality with his retreating, comically childlike persona.