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Maybe the translation by Donald Keene is too literal and a 'version' by a playwright would have introduced more dramatic urgency.
A major figure in post-war Japanese culture, Mishima is probably better known in the West for the controversial politics and sexuality of his life and his botched ritual suicide than for his prolific plays and novels. Madame de Sade shows the influence of Racine (whom Mishima adapted twice) in its elegant structure and formal rhetoric, with long monologues describing events off-stage, but it fails to emulate the 'flames perceptible through ice' shown in the likes of Phèdre or Andromache.
This is somewhat surprising given the scandalous and salacious subject-matter, namely the activities and writings of the Marquis de Sade, set against the fiery backdrop of revolutionary France. The three acts take place, respectively, in 1772, 1778 and 1790 in the grand salon of the Parisian house of Madame de Montreuil, de Sade's mother-in-law. Mishima has had the original idea of showing the impact de Sade has on six women rather than featuring the man himself so that although his invisible presence is strongly felt we get a range of female perspectives on this philosopher of sadism.
Following an orgy in Marseilles involving drugging and beating prostitutes for sexual pleasure, de Sade has gone into hiding to avoid imprisonment. His wife Renée is determined to stand by him loyally despite her mother trying to persuade her to leave him, so Madame de Montreuil enlists the help of both the promiscuous Comtesse de Saint-Ford and the puritanical Baronesse de Simiane to use their contacts in high places on the Marquis's behalf. But when Madame de Montreuil finds out he has been pursuing his perverse pleasures with her younger daughter Anne in Venice, she takes steps to ensure he is locked up. However, after the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 liberation beckons for prisoners of the ancient regime.
Mishima seems to be drawing some sort of analogy between the extreme sexual licence advocated by de Sade and the political liberty espoused by the French Revolutionaries, as if they were two sides of the same coin: freedom has its dark aspects as well as its idealism. But there is much ambiguity in this work by a man whose own attitudes to sex and violence gained him considerable notoriety. Mishima also suggests that some of the corseted women in the play find a kind of release from their repression in de Sade's acting out of subconscious desires.
The trouble is these interesting ideas do not come to life on stage: the general effect is static and cerebral rather than dynamic and passionate. The emotions which the characters express seem distanced and we feel no frisson of the forbidden or thrill of danger. Above all, there is little sense of a revolutionary spirit rampaging through French society.
For once Grandage fails to animate the drama, though Christopher Oram's palatial set and gorgeous costumes dazzle, and Lorna Heavey's projections, Neil Austin's lighting and Adam Cork's sound all help to vary the somewhat stultifying atmosphere.
As Madame de Monteuil Judi Dench is a formidably domineering and devious representative of conventional morality but we don't really feel her desperation to protect her daughters from corruption. Rosamund Pike shows Madame de Sade's strong character but with more earnestness than emotion, and her motives behind changing from wifely devotion to religious chastity remain obscure, while Fiona Button's Anne is remarkably naïve for one so naughty.
There are some nice touches of humour in the opening exchanges between Frances Barber's brazenly sensual Comtesse de Saint-Ford and Deborah Findlay's hypocritically prurient Baronesse de Simiane, while Jenny Galloway is the increasingly rebellious maidservant Charlotte who senses that the wind of change will blow the common people to the top.
'Let's hope that the Donmar's next and final production in their year-long West End season, the much-hyped Jude Law Hamlet, is a return to their previous splendid form.
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