HighEstate.co.uk theatre company are celebrating the Japan 2001 festival by
staging iconoclastic writer Yukio Mishima's extraordinary and rarely-staged
play, Madame De Sade. The play tells the story of the Divine Marquis from
the perspective of the women in his life; Renee, his wife, her mother, her
sister (with whom De Sade had an affair), and a few others.

The action is confined to conversation and speeches, as the women try to explain their
hatred and passion for the notorious De Sade. Mishima, no stranger to the
transformative nature of suffering, is fascinated by the masochistic nature
of Renee's role, and his presentation of her as "a monster of devotion" is
weirdly fascinating, as are the cold but extraordinary sexual fantasies, and
his vision of De Sade as a mental revolutionary, who had discovered "a back
stairway up to heaven". But the actors struggle with wild poetic language
and complex metaphors too grand and stylised for this very straight
production, and the simple staging and costumes focus all attention on the
individual performances, and make it all too easy to miss the passage of
time -- the three acts are set many years apart, which is easily missed.

It is difficult to avoid drawing parallels with Mishima's own life (he too had
a wife who devoted much of her life to his defence, possibly for little
reward) but this isn't exploited in the production, which concentrates
instead on presenting the statements as historical and emotional truth -- a
hard fight in the metaphorically charged language of Mishima. The
combination of Mishima and De Sade ought to be explosive, but the production
doesn't quite ring true. Possibly the translation could do with some
updating, and the actors are certainly done no favours by the blunt face-on
staging of this very demanding play.

Jeremy Dennis
23-05-01

nb. I'm afraid that there are no pictures available of Madam de Sade, so we have to make do with her husband instead.