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Just last night I saw a local production of a new play by Doug Wright entitled "Quills: The Torrid Tale of the Marquis deSade's Imprisonment at Charenton Asylum." The play was produced by the Blue Barn Theater troupe at the abandoned Burlington Train Station.
Overall, it was a fantastic play. My only major criticism is the failure of the playwright to inform the audience that it was primarily fiction, with no real similarity to the actual events of the story. In the play, the managers of the Asylum are desperate to keep the Marquis from expressing himself through writing, to the point of eventually torturing and executing him. In real life, they encouraged his creativity, as the plays he was writing and producting were something of a minor revenue source for the asylum. Local nobility would attend primarily for the novelty value of watching plays written by deSade, performed by lunatics. DeSade died of old age, with possible contributions from his extreme over-eating---he weighed close to 300-pounds when he was sentenced to the asylum, and continued to gain till his death.
Obviously, the true story doesn't make very compelling drama.
In Quills, deSade is played brilliantly by John Durbin(who our local paper informs me has a recurring role on Deep Space Nine), and I have to wonder if when he accepted this role he was told it was going to be done in a building with no heat, on the edge of a Nebraska winter...The character spends approximately half of the play's three hours buck naked. He's a braver(or at least more masochistic) man than I.
Apart from the lack of heat, the Train Station was a perfect location for this work, which was staged in the vast central waiting area. Admittedly the echoes were a little distracting during the scenes which took place in offices or other supposedly enclosed areas, but added cosiderably to the scenes in the asylum proper.
All of the actors are fantastic---though I can't remember any of their names, as the troupe did not have programs to hand out. I'll be going to see it again before the end of its run, because the poster said that the actress playing deSade's wife will be replaced next week by Jill Anderson.
Unless there's someone else here from Omaha, the only thing I can think of that any of you may have seen her in would be omaha: the movie, which played most of the major film fests a couple years ago. Jill was the 'hero's' hairdresser/tai-kwan-do blackbelt ex-girlfriend. If you haven't seen this movie, it probably isn't too much of a loss---its major appeal(other than Jill) is a slew of inside-jokes that no-one who hasn't lived in Omaha could possibly comprehend.
Jill is a beautiful, charming, talented and generally wonderful human being. Her performance as Muffy the J-Crew Catalog Girl in Go-Go Boys From Planet X was something that I will never forget. She takes a third place on my list of the hottest women on the planet, just after Tori Amos and Janeane Garofalo. Why hasn't Hollywood taken notice yet?
I'm not exactly certain why I let this review turn into shameless shilling for an actress who wasn't even in the show the night I saw it, but I'm too lazy to do anything about it at this point.
If you're gonna pass through Omaha sometine before Nov. 2, check this one out.
I'm done now.
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