Full Moon Theatre and Labyrinth Production’s contemporary reworking of Rachilde’s Madame La Mort is not for the casual viewer. Diving straight first into a surreal soundscape of fragmented voices, Madame La Mort drags the audience straight into an emotionally intense vortex between two characters enduring violence and the struggle it has left behind.
The play begins in the attic of a home terrorized by abuse and violence. In a two-person cast, Esme Somerside-Gregory and Siena Jackson-Wolfe carry the immensely complex task of portraying Paul and Lucie. Lucie is cautious, measured, and is looking for a way out. By contrast, Paul is frantic and physically restless, inundated in a perpetuating cycle of pain. In particular, Somerside-Gregory is brilliant as Paul, bringing to the stage a feverish and frenzied physicality that slows in moments where tenderness and intimacy are shared.
For the pair, the sea becomes a symbol of hope and calm. The play solidifies this in setting its final scenes where Paul and Lucie meet once more, before they truly part ways and slowly begin to accept what they have endured. Following scene after scene where the lights agitatedly flash pink and orange and sound effects are wildly discordant, the play’s agony decelerates to an almost serene halt. In an intimate and much-needed dialogue, the characters linger on their shared experience and pain.
Madame La Mort, though clearly carefully crafted and beautifully told, has the tendency to become almost too visceral; too intense. Drawing on the French Symbolist movement is intriguing, but the approach taken draws away from the production’s primary goal of depicting the noxious cycle of violence and care. At times, instead, the audience, much like the characters themselves, are caught and clouded in the narrative’s tumultuous frenzy. The play becomes a blur.
Nonetheless, Madame La Mort is an artful reinterpretation of its source material, told with passion, though it is perhaps best-suited for those familiar with Rachilde’s work and Symbolist theatre.
Madame La Mort is running until August 29 at the Annexe at theSpace @ Symposium Hall. Buy tickets here.
Images provided as press material.
