Nothing can save can save Yukio Mishima’s static play from petrifying: not the fact that it is the story of the Marquis de Sade; not the fact that one of those women is played by Dame Judi Dench; and not even the, admittedly irrelevant but interesting, fact that Mishima committed ritual suicide. To breathe life into the accounts of the Marquis’ sado-masochism, Michael Grandage’s production relies entirely on the sumptuous crinoline dresses worn by his cast. That Dench, as de Sade’s mother-in-law, is more disapproving than shocked, is interesting; as is Rosamund Pike’s defiant loyalty as his wife. But Mishima is dodgily more admiring than enquiring about his subject.
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