'A play that begs to be talked about'

" 'Avant garde' is thrown around a lot when dealing with this play," said director Garrick Dietze.

He was talking about the current Chameleon Theatre Circle production of a play with a mouthful of a title: "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade."

Dietze doesn't consider it as edgy as it might have been in the 1960s, when it premiered. Still, as the title might suggest, this is not light escapist fare.

A strange, sometimes violent and often thought-provoking play within a play, "Marat/Sade" is set in Chareton Asylum in July 1808 after the French Revolution, where historically Sade actually did spend time as a patient and where he had other patients perform his plays.

In writer Peter Weiss's historical drama, which won a Tony in 1966, Sade produces a play that focuses on the last days of Jean-Paul Marat, a radical journalist, theorist and politician. Marat fulminates about class disparity and revolution, and writes and scratches himself incessantly in a bathtub where he sits to soothe his debilitating skin disease.

Patients argue with him and with each other, guards jump in frequently to baton anyone who steps out of line, and a Greek chorus of drunks punctuates the action.

"It's chaotic, like any revolution would be," said Brendon Etter of Northfield, who plays Marat. The play serves as a philosophical exchange between Marat, a hard-line revolutionary, and Sade, a nihilist and individualist (and sadist, of course) and brings up questions about revolution and individual responsibility.

Adam Scarpello of St. Paul plays a wheezing, twitchy, creepy Sade.

"He has his own horrors about him," he said. "He's a nihilist. He just doesn't care." Aside from doing historical research, Scarpello had to practice breathing "on the brink of hyperventilation" to play the asthmatic Sade. "When I start breathing, it takes you to the moment. He's a dark, dark person." To prepare, he would "visualize the darkest, dirtiest, nastiest thing I can think of."

As Marat, Etter folds his tall frame into a tiny bathtub, where he alternates between writing and angry outbursts. "He was one of the driving forces of the French Revolution. He fomented killing all the rich," said Etter. "They wanted him dead. He's very sharp, very bright, but physically debilitated. He's still very controversial. He helped usher in the Reign of Terror. People were executed on the spot. He did not compromise."

He likes how the play's structure creates an interesting complexity for the actors. "You really have to make a lot of choices -- [such as] whether you are going to be the inmate playing Marat or Marat," Etter said. "It's really a challenge but a lot of fun."

Jim Larsen of Eden Prairie agreed. "To be an actor playing an actor playing a character. All these layers. It's very interesting."

Larsen said he hopes audience members "go out for a beer afterwards and talk about it. It's really a play that begs to be talked about."