Oxford’s flirtation with the darker side of human nature has reached its climax this week with the staging of Quills. The play explores the battle between meaning and nothingness through a clash of personalities, the Marquis de Sade (Max Hoehn) and the Abbé de Coulmier (Alex Bowles), within an asylum in Napoleonic France. The play’s impetus stems from the arrival of Doctor Royer-Collard (Tom van der Klugt) and his mission to impose stringent measures on the asylum, which begins a battle not simply to confine the Marquis, but to “cure” him. The plot is driven throughout by the irrepressibility of the id, as the Marquis continually finds other methods of writing or unleashing his art upon the world, until his final work, a piece that is innocent in its content, is twisted out of all shape by the id that has surfaced in both the Abbé and the Doctor. This final work and their interpretation of it provides the key to the Marquis’ central point: that the physical existence of man with its dark reality is just as valid a part of humanity as the spiritual, possibly more so, and that his art by extension is simply the free expression of an undeniable part of what it is to be human. The readers, and thus humanity itself, are just as culpable as the Marquis for the production of his art, since it is their own passions, emotions and hatreds that make the art possible. Perhaps the most poignant expression of this is in the way that the Abbé himself in the end becomes another medium for the voice of the Marquis, which he had so savagely tried to silence. The execution of this play does not betray its themes: the acting is always masterful. Alex Bowles as the Abbé perfectly depicts the gradual decline of the humanitarian priest as he is conquered by more sinister forces within himself; his altercations with the Marquis (Max Hoehn) have an energy that resonates deeply and never appears anything less than genuine. Max Hoehn is consistently brilliant in his vast range as he plays the Marquis. He quickly changes from witty socialite, to a dark brooding poet, to a beast, and finally to a miserable wretch at the end, who manages to hold onto his defiance until the last. Tom van der Klugt is also extremely accomplished in his role, one which could quite easily have fallen prey to caricature: the physical register constantly informs and elaborates the language as he provides Doctor Royer-Collard with a clinical air of selfishness and ambition, whilst keeping him completely human. Though the final scenes of the play might have been too numerous and disjointed at times owing to prop changes, the quality of the acting always redeemed these minor problems. A few times I even found myself shivering at the actors’ mere descriptions of the horrors at Charenton, since they possessed so much power. I can quite honestly say this is the best student play I have seen: I hope you enjoy it.
