Trap Door Company
Trap Door Theatre
Director: Beata Pilch
Chicago, IL
January 2002
Set Design Consultant: Joey Wade
Lighting Design: Richard Norwood



"And if there's an opportunity to underscore the shocks with a live band of faux lunatics pounding away on guitar and percussion between spoken lines, then so much the better for the Trap Door types."
Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
January 23, 2002


"De Sade's captors and would-be reformers (John Gray as Dr. Royer-Collard and Sean Marlow as the Abbe de Coulmier) are really more ruined and corrupted protagonists than villains, and de Sade himself (Wesley Walker) is the apotheosis of sadist antihero, both corrupter and martyr. All three actors do marvelous work, especially Marlow, of whom the most is asked (aside from Walker, who calmly displays the Full Marquis for at least an hour). Nicole Wiesner, in a lovely double turn, is equally affecting as ingenue and emasculating coquette. Joey Wade's set design transforms the stage into giant sheets of longhand-filled parchment, reinforcing the script's subordination of character to text; the sound track, played live by Julius Dobiesz, Carl Wisniewski, and Rob Szymczak, is a slick combination of ambient and incidental effects. Beata Pilch's direction is adept throughout, but in the second act her grisly yet beautiful tableaux achieve a rare, searing memorabilit"
Brian Nemtusak, Chicago Reader
January 24, 2002