Madame de Sade Tickets

As part of the Donmar Warehouse season, The Wyndham’s Theatre on Charing Cross Road is presenting Madame de Sade with Dame Judi Dench. This is the third of four plays appearing in the West End during this ambitious season. The show is directed by Michael Gandage, (who is also directing the season’s production of Ivanov) whose artistic vision brings out the drama and depth to the play by Yukio Mishima, the Japanese playwright. The play runs from 13th March 2009 to 23rd May 2009 with both matinee and evening performances throughout.

Set in Paris shortly before the French Revolution changed the country, Madame de Sade concerns a man locked in the Bastille for crimes of perversion. This man is the Marquis de Sade, a man considered by some as a ‘monster’. Outside of the Bastille, six women all discuss their experiences of this man, all from the different angles from which alternate beliefs are held. Among the six woman is Renée, the Marquis de Sade’s wife, by his side whatever the outcome and clearly devoted to him. She defends him no matter what, no matter what charges he faces and no matter how much this disgusts her own mother.

The play is constructed around these dialogues, as we learn of the Marquis through these tales as the six women wait to hear of the outcome. Marquis is brought to life as he waits inside the Bastille for his fate.

The playwright who brought Madame de Sade to the world was Yukio Mishima, who in 1965 caused a lot of controversy when the play was released in Japan. It is often regarded as Mishima’s finest works after being translated from Japanese to English and performed all over the world. Five years after writing the play, Mishima committed ritualistic suicide in what was thought was an attempt to revive the Japanese Samurai spirit and revolt against the system which mirrors the French situation in the 1700s.

The Donmar Warehouse, who is working with the Wyndham Theatre to bring you this season, is a non-profit theatre company who operate in Covent Garden. They have an excellent reputation for bringing talent and expertise to the West End theatres for the past 15 years.

As well as Madame de Sade with Dame Judi Dench, the Donmar Warehouse season also includes Twelth Night by William Shakespeare with Derek Jacobi, Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Jude Law and Chekhov’s Ivanov with Kenneth Branagh.