“Marie Antoinette” by Unknown, probably Jean-Baptiste André Gautier-Dagoty (1740-1786). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
“Marie Antoinette” by Unknown, probably Jean-Baptiste André Gautier-Dagoty (1740-1786). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

“The Revolutionists”

Dec. 6-Jan. 7

Lauren Gunderson’s ode to women of the French Revolution poses the always-pressing but now particularly urgent question: What is the responsibility of the citizen when a country is in crisis? Gunderson—the most produced playwright in the country this theater season—puts former queen Marie Antoinette, feminist playwright Olympe de Gouges, assassin Charlotte Corday (all three lost their heads, by the way), and Caribbean spy Marianne Angelle (a fictionalized composite character based on the unsung women of the Haitian Revolution) in a room together to hash it out. All the while, de Gouges pens her “Declaration of the Rights of Woman,” Corday prepares to murder Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub, Antoinette awaits the guillotine, and Angelle checks her fellow “revolutionists”—after all, they’re fighting for the freedom of a country that runs a slave colony.  Dec. 6-Jan. 7, Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette St., (410) 752-2208, everymantheatre.org, $25-$65.

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