There are two very serious passages in Sam Ward’s script, the first a visceral monologue describing the ripping apart of the governor of the Bastille down to his sinews and bones by the mob.  The second is a Sansculotte describing what a starving person does when faced with unlimited dead bodies.  These speeches may be blood thirsty but they are serious and thought provoking.

Electronic music accompanies the scenes and the improvised set is one of gym equipment including a full sized horse which comes apart to provide different playing areas.  The psychotic Aristocrat (Jessica Enemokwu) pulls many faces when disgusted by the peasants or the bourgeoisie.  La Fayette (Sha Dessi) comes back from the American Revolution full of fraternal support from the Americas with a cowboy Wild West attitude.  I found it interesting that fraternité is translated as democracy. 

This is the children’s playground version of history even with an inflatable bouncy castle and balls handed out to the audience with which to pelt the King.  The last quarter of an hour takes a different tack.  Off stage we hear a middle class dinner party chattering about their Tuscan villa and skiing holidays and I think the message is that revolution has not wiped out inequality and class and privilege.  While the snippets of bourgeois conversation are heard, the cast build a full sized guillotine on stage.

But England hasn’t has a violent revolution.  True, we beheaded a king and had a few years of the Commonwealth but we try to revise what has gone wrong and seems unjust, rather that enacting a complete overthrow of the powerful class.   

I also wonder on the wisdom of writers directing their own work.  I see two dramaturgs were involved in The Glorious French Revolution but question the result of their contribution.