Review - Madame De Sade, The Donmar at the Wyndham's Theatre

Whip-crack-away, whip-crack-away!


Last week, grumpy sex symbol, Gordon Brown lookalike Ken Stott stopped mid-flow in a performance of A View From The Bridge and refused to continue giving his much praised Eddie Carbone until some annoying school kids were removed from the audience. It took 15 minutes of wrangling with the accompanying teacher and the "Out, Out, Out"encouragement from some other members of the audience before the young people left and the play recommenced.
Last night at the Wyndham's as the porcelain perfect Rosamund Pike launched herself bravely into another over-written, ludicrously pretentious defence of her wifely devotion to the Marquis de Sade, the Silver-Fox had to physically restrain me from leaping to my feet and in an homage to Ken demanding the ejection from the theatre of the
six women on the stage who were ruining my evening.

And this was the sainted Dame Judi, and the afore mentioned Ms Pike, and Frances Barber, doing a wonderful Margaret Lockwood,

Deborah Findlay, who the Silver-Fox triumphantly recognised as a Cranford graduate, Jenny Galloway, a dreamy look in her eye as she recalled the good old days of Mamma Mia!, and, a new-comer to me, Fiona Button who had drawn the short straw in the wig department and seemed to be wearing a couple of Douglas Hodge's old Richard Mawbey's from La Cage Aux Folles. I know!

The play, by wacky Japanese funster Yukio Mishima, revolves around the wife and mother-in-law of the Marquis de Sade with miss whiplash, naughty little sister and disaproving prude standing around then sometimes, and this is the most action you will see on stage in the 105 tortuous minutes of the piece, sitting.. as they give great long, lurid speeches about how they feel about the Marquis' little quirks. ...over an 18 year period.


Frances Barber as the Comtesse de Saint-Fond, sporting a wig of Marge Simpson proportions, seems to reach a higher plane of sexual and spiritual fulfilment when she allows her naked body to be used as an altar/table, but she just talks about it. Rosamund Pike as the Marquis' wife spends a lovely Christmas at home nakedly suspended from a chandelier watching her "worker bee of pleasure" husband sodomise the help, but once again we are denied the pleasure of any action and she just talks about it.

I had a vision of the real story happening off-stage and all being directed with flaming brands and whips and dwarves, by Ken Russell, and wha'd you know at that point Deborah Findlay re-entered dressed as a nun! Was I the only one laughing?

Dame Judi appears with the help of a cane, though one that never caresses a bare buttock, a consequence of her spraining an ankle last week. One can only presume she was making a break for sanity and was injured when being wrestled to the ground by stage management.

Scouring the programme for a reason why the Dame lent her reputation to this painful experience, the Silver-Fox came upon this..
"Before I look at any play, I like to hear a vision for the piece. I need to be excited by other people's enthusiasm and so I start by listening to what the director has to say. When I finally read Madame de Sade, I realised I hadn't come across anything like it before."
I think we know what she's saying.

When the Marquis was finally announced to be at the door I was thinking, let it be Russell Brand! but the old bugger showed the greatest of taste in not appearing in this most unsexy piece about sex.

As the applause, and there was alot of it, died down a chap in front of us turned to his wife/companion and with a deathly finality said, "Well that's that then", and you just knew that she'd blown her chance of seeing the inside of a theatre for the rest of the year. Leaving, a woman behind us tapped me on the shoulder and said: "I noticed you were fidgeting a bit, what did you think of it?" I gave her my frank opinion, it didn't take long, she turned to her friend saying: "See it's not just me!"
Maybe there is a whole audience of people clapping like crazy each night all thinking that they were the only one to see that the Emperor had no clothes.