Danton’s Death by Georg Büchner, directed by Michael Grandage, at the National Theatre, London

Danton_2
Eleanor Matsuura as Marion and Toby Stephens as Georges Danton in Danton's Death, The National Theatre 2010. Photo Johan Persson.


Danton’s Death
by Georg Büchner
Adapted by Howard Brenton

National Theatre
Directed by Michael Grandage
Designer - Christopher Oram
Lighting Designer - Paule Constable
Music and Sound - Adam Cork

Cast:
David Beames - Gen. Billon
Max Bennett - Hérault-Seychelles
Stefano Braschi - Citizen
Kirsty Bushell - Julie
Jason Cheater - Citizen
Judith Coke - Duplay
Emmanuella Cole - Citizen
Ilan Goodman - Lyonnais
Taylor James - Citizen
Michael Jenn - Herman
Phillip Joseph - Barrere
Barnaby Kay (as Camille Desmoulins) - Camille
Gwilym Lee - Lacroix
Elliot Levey - as Robespierre
Eleanor Matsuura - Marion
Elizabeth Nestor - Elizabeth
Alec Newman - as Saint-Just
Chu Omambala - Collot d;Herbois
Rebecca O’Mara - Lucile
Rebecca Scroggs - Eleonore
David Smith - David Smith
Toby Stephens -  Danton
Jonathan Warde - Citizen
Ashley Zhangazha - Legendre

Bloody philosophes

. The French Revolution was not the most monstrous of its kind. In World War II Hitler beheaded more people with portable guillotines in Vienna than the tumbrels delivered in Paris. But it survives as a lasting emblem of the fall of reason. That the society of Voltaire and Diderot could descend into the mindless savagery of the Reign of Terror prefigured Freud’s gloomy conclusion that civilization is a thin veneer painted over atavistic brutality. In the shattering drama, Danton’s Death, the point is made more trenchantly when the hero declares that sanity itself is a fragile construction, a bubble that bursts when the true nightmare of life reveals itself. This was essentially the world view of Georg Büchner — we see it reinforced in his better-known Woyzeck (largely thanks to Alban Berg's operatic adaptation as Wozzeck), in which the schizophrenia of a common soldier is played upon by the equally mad but socially acceptable devices of his superiors.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller