Dobama’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ promises cake, provides crumbs Bob Abelman Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal Member, International Association of Theatre Critics Had psychotherapy been around in the late-18th century, Sigmund Freud would have had a field-day with fellow Austrian Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, better known as Marie-Antoinette. One of 16 children and the eighth daughter and second youngest child of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa, archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Marie had issues. She was afraid of her forbidding mother and intimidated by her oldest brother. She was functionally illiterate though very well-versed in the empty enterprise of self-indulgence. She was culturally and socially isolated prior to being sent off as a 14-year-old to wed Louis-Auguste, the heir to the throne of France, and she was even lonelier during her time as Queen. Which wasn’t very long. Marie was famously imprisoned and beheaded during the French Revolution at the age of 37. In “Marie Antoinette,” first performed in 2012 and currently on stage at Dobama Theatre, playwright David Adjmi does Freud’s work by bringing to the surface all that ails Marie. For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/.