DANTON'S DEATH

National Theatre at the Olivier

24.07.10

Christopher Oram's design puts us in a vaguely public space, tall, austere, classical, but just a facade, as we see from the stout wooden supports behind.

Brenton's abbreviation means no interval, and no mob either, just the power of words as classical revolutionaries are pitted against the romantic guillotine in the “blood-soaked Eden” of the Terror, the statue of Freedom not yet cast.

His text is rich, well served by Toby Stephens' dictatorial Danton and Elliot Levey's diminutive, menacing, incorruptible Robespierre. Alec Newman's ranting St Just memorable, too.

I liked the way the action froze and then jumped from the public to the domestic and back again; the final scene, with the severed heads hitting the basket at an industrial rate, is rightly celebrated, but it would be mere guignol without the merciless dissection of radicalism leading up to it.