Marat Sade

n an insane asylum in early 19th-century France, the Marquis de Sade directs the inmates in a most unusual spectacle: a recreation of the assassination of revolutionary writer Jean-Paul Marat told through verse, songs, and a barrage of avant-garde devices. Brook's legendary staging of Peter Weiss' play is an intense, profound, and provocative exploration of human nature that pits Marat's radical idealism against de Sade's libertine nihilism.