In David Adjmi’s contemporary take on the young queen of France, Marie is a confection created by a society that values extravagance and artifice. But France’s love affair with the royals sours as revolution brews, and for Marie, the political suddenly becomes very personal. From the light and breezy banter at the palace to the surging chants of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!” in the streets, Marie Antoinette holds a mirror up to our contemporary society that might just be entertaining itself to death.

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REVIEWS:

"Mr. Adjmi has set himself the task of translating this gilded-cage life into the contemporary language of the spoiled and empty-headed rich, with...Marie sounding rather like the pampered teenage heroine of the movie 'Clueless.' He does so with the empathy that has always leavened his politically judgmental plays...MR. ADJIMI IS ONE OF SEVERAL ADVENTUROUS YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS NOW...who rather than avoiding clichés are embracing them to find out what enduring truths and lies still lurk beneath their threadbare exteriors."

 The New York Times

"David Adjmi’s jagged yet elegant historical riff... This tough-minded play doesn’t offer a middle path... Adjmi complicates the satire by imbuing his doomed protagonist with intellectual vibrancy and genuine compassion..."

 Time Out New York

"From Valley Girl comedy (“the linzer tarts omigod”) to mad-scene finale,...David Adjmi’s [Marie Antoinette is a] marvelous, disturbing, revisionist take."

 New York Magazine

"In Adjmi's work, even the most innocent-seeming sweetmeats have bitter fillings—brutality, acid, blood... Macarons cede to just deserts, gowns to rags, quips to insane ramblings, gilded dream to caustic nightmare. And still the degradation continues. We are powerless to stop the violence, and what we may have once desired we now deplore. Or, Adjmi asks, do we?"

 Village Voice

"David Adjmi’s pivotal work... he resembles artists as diverse as Luis Bunuel and Rainer Werner Fassbinder... Adjmi’s brilliance is to use trashy vernacular speech to allude to the way history trashes us."

 The New Yorker

Premiere Production: Marie Antoinette premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts in September, 2012. The play had its New York premiere at SoHo Rep in October, 2013 under the direction of Rebecca Taichman.