Music and Marat/Sade

In response to Dr. T’s suggestion and recommendations from my friends, I went to see the Ohio State Theatre Department’s production of Marat/Sade. When I walked into the theater, I did not think that there was going to be any music in the play, but later realized it is a play with music rather than a musical. Interestingly, there are twelve tracks on the Marat/Sade professionally recorded album, so music definitely features heavily. The setting of the play is within a mental asylum in the 1808, where the inmates are putting on their own play as a form of artistic therapy. Because of this, the musical performances are not meant to sound professional at all, or at least, that is how the Ohio State production chose to interpret them. As a performer myself, I had never seen musically intentionally treated this way, so I was immediately intrigued by the reasoning behind their presentation. By the end of Marat/Sade, I had decided that even though the musical performances were atypical and didn’t advance the storyline of the play within the play, they did provide characterization to the inmates that led to a much less surprising ending and greater understanding of the inmates in general.

            All of the songs are featured in the play that the inmates are performing, as opposed to the frame story of the inmates and patrons, so the actors are interestingly performing them as actors, creating a haunting layering effect. Whether or not these actors are actually great musicians was irrelevant since their characters were not. In other words, they were going out of their way to sound extremely unprofessional, and in some instances, downright bad. Danielle Wisti’s character, Corday, was meant to be a somewhat proficient singer, so it was really only in her performances that any proper singing technique could be observed at all. It was consistent with her character, though, as melancholia seemed to be her primary affliction, rather than some of the more energized inmates at the asylum. I thought what was so interesting is that these hackneyed musical performances added to the overall creepiness of the play. While a beautiful musical performance is often appreciated, this form of performance can be just as meaningful if given the proper setting.

The characters in the asylum were being forced into a mold (the play) that they were not suited for, and their inappropriateness as well as a longing for freedom was portrayed through these musical performances. Just as the characters were forced into a situation that was largely unnatural for them, the songs featured through the play within the play usually seemed out of place as well. With musicals, the songs usually add to the storyline or advance the plot in some way, but these songs seemed almost tacked on as an afterthought. They were a break in action that often ended up adding more to the frame story than the play within the play.

The singers and musicians were unnatural sounding, just as many of their actions were throughout the play. The inmates of the asylum seemed to revel in the freedom they were able to experience through artistic expression and usually took it much farther than other, more professional performers would. The intensity behind their highly censored acts, as censored by the guards and patrons, betrayed their longing to express their true natures. When, in the final act, the inmates of the asylum riot, causing a series of rapes and deaths, their outburst is not overly surprising. Their actions as well as their musical performances throughout the play had portrayed them as characters whose true natures were being violently repressed, so it seemed only natural that they burst at some point.