revolution_fr | Accounts of Committee meeting on March 30, '94 (when Danton's arrest was ordered)??

Actually, I love the film 'Danton' as a film, as a piece of art. I saw it not too long after it came out, around the same time as seeing another version of the play on stage, and if Wajda's intention was to make me come down on the side of Dionysius and hate Apollo, West against East, then he screwed up - if anything, his Danton can be read as asking for it, more so than the historical record supports (in the film, he's clearly attempting a coup). I find the film mostly very nuanced, though - yes, there are some very heavy-handed scenes, particularly the closing scene (a swipe at Terreur et Vertu?) - but in the main I think enough of the play survives to make me happy. When I lend the DVD to friends I give them a lecture first, and I can be a real pain about it at dinner parties - "well, actually...." and go on about my theories of CIA manipulation of the run up to the bicentenary , but there've been times - specially a few years ago, when I used to be vaguely active in politics, when I've thought, holy cow, this is just like a scene from 'Danton'....
Maybe it's a girl thing? Maybe blokes watch and go, yeah, Danton's getting pissed and fucking whores, what a mensch!

...Whoa whoa whoa, you've seen "The Danton Case" staged? How long was that?

It was Pam Gems' adaptation, so not the full text, and I think it was heavily altered. I think the original play is pretty well unperformable as a straight play - it's written more like a dream, and I saw it in a proscenium arch theatre, when it would have been much better in a theatre-in-the-round type space, more intimate. I'm curious to know how Wajda staged his theatre version, and if he left it intact - ok, I don't know many Poles, but those I do all know her name well, and he said at the time what a respected literary figure she was by then.

Have you heard of the insane-sounding 5 hour musical play done in the late 80's, with James Marsters from 'Buffy' as Robespierre, who is shown screwing his sister or something like that? Gawd!

It was Pam Gems' adaptation, so not the full text, and I think it was heavily altered. I think the original play is pretty well unperformable as a straight play - it's written more like a dream, and I saw it in a proscenium arch theatre, when it would have been much better in a theatre-in-the-round type space, more intimate.

Out of curiosity, how was the trial (if it was shown onstage) handled? If it's in there, I'd imagine it's hard to do convincingly...

I'm afraid I can't remember! It was 20 years ago - I think they did do it onstage, on benches, but I can't remember anything more useful than that. It's offstage in the original play, (I think - god my memory!), but I've read a note that says Wajda's 70's stage production seated the Tribunal in the audience, so I presume, as with the film, he added it from the surviving trial notes.

Do you mean Pam Gems' play "The Snow Palace"? Or did she actually do an adaptation of "The Danton Case"? Cause The Snow Palace is more about the life of Stanislawa Prz... herself. I read it and I have to say I didn't like it very much because I thought Gems really misunderstood Stanislawa Prz's relationship to her plays and characters. The "excerpts" of The Danton Case that made it into The Snow Palace were very different from the actual play.

It was an adaptation of 'The Danton Case', called 'The Danton Affair', but I hadn't read the original play at the time and it's so long ago now since I saw it I can't remember how they compare, but I think it was quite heavily adapted. I haven't read 'the Snow Palace' yet but I'm interested to see what she did with it - it's such an unusual life I'm surprised it hasn't appealed to more dramatists, but as far as I know it's the only dramatisation (?). Hilary Mantel was going to do a novel, but (as with her mooted Marat one) I don't know if she ever did - her new one's about another chap who got beheaded on the 28th July - Thomas Cromwell...

Rather belatedly, I've found the theatre programme - running time 3 hours 45 mins, including a 15 min interval! It was at the RSC, so long running times were normal: when they did shorter modern plays, you'd get a double or triple bill. The programme notes are actually very good (by which I mean accurate and leftish - the first page is entirely devoted to a fair sized chunk of the 'terror and virtue' speech, a lot more than you'd come across in a standard English-language history book), and, whilst my memory's not good enough to say how much, the writer says she followed the original play pretty closely: I only had Wajda's film to compare it to at the time, but it was definitely more 'feminine'. A version of Les Dieux ont Soif has just opened this week in London, called 'Liberty', but I don't think I want to pay £45 plus train fare to be told the revolution was bad! (and like the Bush administration!)

That's more or less how I see it - although I suppose I don't have the same amount of background to go with it - I was honestly starting to think I was quite alone, ha. I'm still not sure what to make of the play (of course I have not seen it staged, and incidentally I have not seen la Terreur et la Vertu either, woe, these things are lost on me) - well, I don't recall it as well as Thermidor (I recall that I was reading it in a dentist's office though) but it was very strange, parts are utterly different from Danton and then you come across something that was obviously absorbed directly into the film. Oh dear, and now I can't remember where I was going with that, so I'll leave it there. Anyway, I don't think I have anything to add.
...you know, that must be it.

Accounts of Committee meeting on March 30, '94 (when Danton's arrest was ordered)??

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