Good riddance to Marie Antoinette

Saw DAvid Hajmi's Marie Antoinette last night at the Gamm Theatre, in Pawtucket, and, starting on a positive note, everything I've seen to date at the Gamm has been smart and professional on every level, the acting, stage direction, design, sound - and in a terrifically intimate setting where every seat has a great sight line and the audience feels almost a part of the action on stage. Especially notable was the tour de force by Madeleine Lambert in the title role - showing a wide range of feeling and emotion, moving from cocky narcissism to deep suffering, and never learning a damn thing. She's in every single scene in the 90 minute , no intermission production. That said, what's the great fascination w. Marie Antoinette, especially by American writers and directors? Over the past 15 years or so, maybe beginning with the despicable opera Ghosts of Versailles, a # of American writers and directors have looked back in awe and envy at MA: she was just a kid, she wasn't so bad, she was rich, sure, but she loved beauty (just like you, the patrons, right?). This play is a little more complex, but it also is sending some mixed and confusing messages: Overall, they portray MA as a simple-minded victim of her birth and of her times: think real housewives, or Kim Kardashian in the role. So we see and understand that she's in way over her head, that she's suffering, that she's stuck w/ a horrible marriage and a horrible life. But then when the revolution breaks out and she's imprisoned and (after a failed escape attempt that she totally screws up because of her stupidity) executed - Adjmi also seems to be saying that the revolutionaries are brutes - there are hints that they're being compared with IS terrorists, and other hints that they are like the U.S. military guard at Guatanamo - so I don't know, what's the point, is everyone just crude and evil? The French revolution obviously became a blood bath and fell apart and led to the First Empire - but that doesn't mean the revolutionary impulses were wrong or that the extravagance and narcissism of the monarchy was right. Having seen this - and other works on MA - I'm left each time thinking the same thing: Why are we even thinking about you 200+ years later? Good riddance.