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2012
Theatre
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London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Michael Grandage.
Cast: Judi Dench, Rosamund Pike, Frances Barber, Fiona Button, Deborah Findlay, Jenny Galloway
Description: Michael Grandage directs Yukio Mishima's drama about a woman who remains married to her aristocrat husband, even though he is imprisoned in the Bastille. Starring Judi Dench and Rosamund Pike.
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square 
Phone: 0870950 0925
Website: www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk
Costume drama: Rosamund Pike as Madame de Sade and Dame Judi Dench as her mother
Celebrations: the pair at the after show party at the National Gallery café with fellow actresses Deborah Findlay, Jenny Galloway, Fiona Button and Frances Barber
When it comes to straight plays, or even bent ones, few more weird or perverse than Yukio Mishima’s Madame de Sade can have hit the staid West End stage this century. What can have incited Dame Judi Dench, landed with an unrewarding role in which she appears arrayed in high, upstanding hair and gold-hued dresses that billow out as if there were a giant colander beneath each of them, to lend the production her enormous box-office appeal? Anyone, though, who hopes the play’s title serves as a coded come-on for sado-masochists in search of a bad time, complete with scenes of sexual degradation performed with titillating realism, will be cruelly disappointed.
The impurity of Madame de Sade lies in its thoughts not its deeds. Michael Grandage’s production could be called escapist: designer Christopher Oram’s beautiful, silver-walled salon, which undergoes the evocative transformations of Lorna Heavey’s video projections, and Adam Cork’s music all threaten to upstage the play and distract from its tedium. Grandage struggles to animate Mishima’s arid sequence of formal, sub-romantic speeches in which de Sade is viewed from the perspective of five interested women.
Rosamund Pike’s Madame de Sade represents submissive, wifely devotion; her sister immorality; her mother — Dame Judi’s stately Madame de Montreuil — orthodox morality; Frances Barber’s lascivious, whip-cracking Comtesse uninhibited sexuality and Deborah Findlay’s prim Baronesse religious fervour. Yet the clash of debate is always avoided. In Racine’s plays, which Madame de Sade faintly resembles, passion wars with duty and conscience. Here the women baldly narrate their lives and give laboured vent to their dullish feelings.
Mishima, a major 20th century Japanese writer who committed a grisly form of suicide in 1970, seeks to persuade us that sado-masochism, in some shapes and forms, is a natural, even inevitable component of human behaviour and sexuality, not to be ranked as a shameful, illicit aberration.
The assertion is channelled through Pike’s demure, long-suffering Madame de Sade, who in the course of three acts and 18 years professes a serious faith in her husband, while off-stage he is organising orgies, beating or sodomising prostitutes, drugging them with Spanish Fly, which is an aphrodisiac rather than a top sherry, and languishing in prison. Mishima’s interest was in why the loyal Madame de Sade refused to see her husband ever again after he emerged from jail. Not that he really answers his own question: Madame decides to become a nun and explains that de Sade’s novel Justine showed he had no heart and had “built a back stair way to heaven,” as Donald Keene’s often absurd translation puts it. “He toils and gathers the honey of tenderness under the dazzling summer sun. He is a worker bee of pleasure,” is a typical Keene sentence.
The play’s weirdness — its refusal to deal adequately with problems posed by sado-masochism — does not disguise the fascination of the questions it implicitly raises. Why is it now as in the 18th century usually women who succumb to masochism at the hands of sadistic men like de Sade?
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Having read the reviews, which are universally terrible, I was expecting to be bored stiff by this play. Instead, not only were the acting, set, costumes, lighting and sound breathtaking and superb, the play itself was far more interesting and amusing than I had been led to believe. I wasn't bored for a moment. Am I alone in this? I congratulate the Donmar on taking the risk of reviving this unusual and extraordinary play.
- Stephen Seago, London
I saw Madame De Sade on the Sunday that Judy Dench was away with a sprained ankle.I found this play totally absorbing,the actors brought the story to life for me,and i thought that the set,and the use of lighting upon it ,excellent,Very well done to you all.
- Sandra Smith, sussex England
The acting was superb, the setting, lighting and music beautiful but the play and the translation are awful. The characters aren't well formed enough to believe in them for a minute, save for the servant. There's no real depth to the ideas and thoughts expressed so that you can then accept these cardboard cut-outs as ciphers engaging in an interesting and exciting clash. The speechifying is so dull the cast deserve medals for getting through it. The whole thing's a perfect example of technical brilliance built on sand. The production is listing early on and virtually underground by the end. A tragic waste of talent for all concerned.
- Mark, Balcombe, West Sussex
My wife and I saw the play in a matinee on 1st April (no joke!) and thoroughly enjoyed it. We thought the acting, staging and occasional atmospheric music were superb. Rosamund Pike and Fiona Button particularly shone. Just shows that the critics seem to have very different criteria than those of us humble paying theatre-goers.
- Chris, Twickenham, UK
Exceptionally good. Mishima's undiscovered classic is very topical, with new legislation further restricting sexual activities last year. The central debate is whether people like the Marquis de Sade should be free to practice their, albeit rarefied, sensuality without government intereference or should public safety (and morality) take precedence, A 'Nanny State,' would obviously choose the latter but Miishima was clearly of a more liberal mind. Indeed, Frances Barber's fictional character is very much on the side of de Sade while Judi Dench's matriarchal mistress of deceit and snobbery will do anything to protect her family's reputation, including throwing de Sade to the wolves. Dench is superlative in this role, which is world's away from her own personality - and that's the mark of a brilliant actress. However, Rosamund Pike steals the show with a breathtaking performance as the devoted and spurned, Madame de Sade. A very promising actress indeed. She has poise, looks ravishing in the gorgeous period costumes and lets rip with an almost Shakespearean anguish when she finally decides to tell her errant husband to push off. Michael Grandage's sumptuous production is an absolute treat and the fruity voiced Frances Barber a hoot. Unmissable.
- Dj, London
This play really knocked my socks off. Not totally sure what it was trying to say - 6 different messages from each of the characters - but that didn't detract one little bit from a really exciting night at the theatre. Can you ask for more? I bet tickets are hard to come by. 4 stars.
- John, Twickenham, London, UK.
The best plays are dramatic, the characters has some complexity and develop, and they follow the 'show don't tell' dictum. MdeS was none of these. It was static, the characters were transparent and never changed, and all the action took place elsewhere so 'tell' was the order of the day. The music and video effects were probably there in an effort to pep it up but in my book totally failed. I kept wishing the Marquis would make an appearance. The acting? Not bad but not enough to save the evening.
- Deborah, London
I'm having difficulty matching some of the reviews to the production that I saw; Selwyn isn't the only one who loved it. The Donmar doesn't shy away from "difficult" plays and it doesn't here. It's not just fabulous design, something that all the critics have praised. Above all, it's a thought-provoking production of exceptional quality. Hang onto your tickets and see it for yourselves!
- Ruth, London
We loved it.
- Selwyn Channon, epsom
