Liberty

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by Glyn Maxwell

  • Director: Guy Retallack
  • Designer: Ti Green
  • Composer: William Lyons
  • Choreographer: Paul Harris

April 1793, the French Revolution is four years old and the Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre finds threats to national liberty at home and abroad. When Gamelin, an ambitious and idealistic young magistrate, joins a group of old friends for a picnic outside Paris, the ties of love and affection can take the strain. But how strong will they prove when Gamelin is given power over life and death, and the new republic plunges from high idealism to mob rule and state terror?
Private jealousies and public fears, old alliances and new ideologies, panic legislation and political correctness all combine in this thrilling adaptation of Anatole France’s 1912 novel Les Dieux ont Soif. The poet Glyn Maxwell (whose Lifeblood was voted best play by the British Theatre Guide in 2004) brings a colloquial verse of great fluidity and immediacy to a story that is both fresh and relevant.
A co-production with Lifeblood Theatre Company.

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Discover the play

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Cast

Kirsty Besterman Rose
John Bett Maurice
Gregory Gudgeon Citizen
Belinda Lang Louise
Edward Macliam Phillipe
Ellie Piercy Elodie
Jonty Stephens Citizen
David Sturzaker Evariste Gamelin

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Reviews

**** ‘Touching, intelligently drawn… Compelling’ Time Out

‘Raucous humour, vivid emotion’ Sunday Times

‘Deliciously light and pointed, helped by the scamper of Guy Retallack's direction: anyone who thinks the Globe can't be intimate is yet again proved wrong’ The Observer

'Guy Retallack's production is well staged... Eye-catching performances come from John Bett as a gentle, Lucretius-reading ex-duke and from Belinda Lang as an arch manipulator who goes to her death with a speech of ringing defiance' The Guardian

'Ellie Piercy charts a harrowing course from revolutionary fervour to deranged eroticism as the increasingly neurotic heroine' The Telegraph

'The way a revolution soon eats its own certainly put one in mind of New Labour... David Sturzaker is dark, hunky and nicely remote... Good performances all round' Daily Mail

'Shrewd costume drama does an entertaining job of capturing a tumultuous period of French histroy... The evening is often witty' Metro

'The writing is full of humanity and humour... The trial scenes are a highlight' Daily Express

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