Berkshire Theatre Festival

Unicorn Theatre

Stockbridge, MA

August 2008

Director: Richard Corley

Designers:

Set Designer: Emmet Aiello

Costume Designer: Daryl A. Stone

"If the brief plot summary sounds as if Quills makes a case for encouraging everyone to act out their darkest sexual instincts and relieving the artist of any responsibility for the effect of his work on others, it isn't. This Marquis is literally destroyed piece by piece, but he is not a hero. You are more shocked by his excesses than genuinely moved to like him. All his tormentors do horrible things, but not all are unmitigatingly horrible. The things he write are incendiary, but while persecution can serve as a hose to put out one fire, it can often fan an unquenchable new flame. To quote the words on the fliers the mad Marquis showers on us as take-home reminders at the end of the play: 'Fanaticism in me is the product of the persecutions I have endured from my tyrants. The longer they continue their vexations, the deeper they root my principles in my heart'."

Eyse Sommer, Curtain Up

http://www.curtainup.com/quills.html