Is Harlequin Productions’ new play ‘The Revolutionists’ a ‘manifesto for the modern world’?

Harlequin Productions’ “The Revolutionists,” opening Sept. 8, is a comedy that includes beheadings, a play within a play, a play with historical characters and thoroughly modern sensibilities.

“It’s got this wonderful anachronism,” said director Lauren Love, South Puget Sound Community College’s drama professor. “It’s set in the Reign of Terror in 1793 in Paris. It’s also very unabashedly contemporary. It has a lot of fun with the tension between what you might expect from a period piece and this wonderful energy that comes from the characters’ contemporary language and attitudes.”

In other words, there’s a lot going on in playwright Lauren Gunderson’s 2018 feminist comedy, a show summed up as “wonderfully wild and raucous” by Cincinnati Enquirer critic David Lyman.

Marie Antoinette, played by Harlequin regular and marketing manager Helen Harvester, is by far the best-known of the historical figures in Gunderson’s four-woman show. She’s also the most elaborately costumed and coiffed.

“This Marie Antoinette is essentially the comic relief character, so she is very, very fun,” Harvester said. “The characters speak in present-day vernacular, which acts to free us up and not worry as much about faithfully playing a real historical person. My Marie Antoinette is the Marie of Gunderson’s imagining: a quicksilver, impulsive character whose mind changes in an instant, sometimes mid-sentence. She’s happy; she’s sad; she’s generous; she’s selfish; she’s a Queen; she’s a citizen. She’s a mess.”

Antoinette (no longer queen), Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle (Amanda Kemp, previously seen in 2019’s “The Women”) and assassin Charlotte Corday (Victoria Austin, making her Harlequin debut) all come seeking help or advice from playwright Olympe De Gouge (Angela DiMarco, last seen as the mob-connected femme fatale in “Building Madness”).

The four hang out and comment on the state of society, which sounds not really all that dissimilar to the state of American society right now, beheadings aside. It’s something about which Gunderson, who often mines history to make relevant points, has a lot to say.

“It seems as if she asked herself the question: ‘If you could have dinner with four people from the past, who would they be?’ ” Kelundra Smith wrote in an ATLARTS review of the play’s 2016 premiere in Atlanta. If that sounds flip, Smith also praises the writing: “Gunderson has written a play that delivers a poignant message in a light-hearted way.”

“Perhaps Gunderson is simply laying out her manifesto for the modern world,” the Enquirer’s Lyman posited. “She puts four women on the stage who have a lot to say and turns them loose. It’s a wild ride, filled with verbal gymnastics.”

“I love that it’s funny and then that it also has a message about the value of people coming together to the theater,” said Love, whose only previous work for Harlequin was the pandemic radio-theater version of “This Flat Earth.” “It celebrates the theater, and it celebrates democratic principles. Imagine making a democracy that really works for all people.”

‘The Revolutionists’

• What: Harlequin Productions’ “The Revolutionists” is a comedy set in 18th century France, but that has modern sensibilities and language.
• When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 8-9, plus Sept. 14-16, 21-23; matinees at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10, plus Sept. 17 and 20.
• Where: State Theater, 202 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia
• Tickets: $28-$43, with pay-what-you-choose performances Sept. 14, 20 and 22
• More information: 360-786-0151, https://harlequinproductions.org