A spin on the classics

CAMBRIDGE -- When Gideon Lester and Robert Woodruff started tossing around ideas for the American Repertory Theatre's staging of ''Island of Slaves," they quickly hit on an unexpected way to bring the 1725 French play's themes of oppression and role reversal into contemporary focus: Set it in a drag club.

That might not seem like a self-evident choice for Pierre Carlet de Marivaux's tale of two masters and two servants, who are shipwrecked on an island colonized by former slaves and forced to switch places to learn about cruelty and freedom. But ART artistic director Woodruff, who's directing the production that starts previews tomorrow, says it makes a lot of sense.

''Everyone was a drag queen in 18th-century France," says Woodruff.

The towering wigs, the elaborate makeup, the lavish fabrics -- yes, you can start to see it. And, interjects ART associate artistic director Lester, even the servants of the rich were dressed in elaborate livery, chosen by their masters to complement their own costumes.

''Your servants were just an extension of your own drag," says Lester, who translated the play for this production. ''The downside was that it destroyed the individual personalities of the servants" -- an idea that jibes nicely with Marivaux's exploration of how masters and servants reveal more of themselves when they shed their familiar clothes.

The writer and the director also explored medieval carnival traditions, which turned the social order upside down for a brief, wild festival every year, as well as the similar reversals of the Roman saturnalia. But to get the idea across to modern American audiences, they kept coming back to drag.

''Drag queens are extremely theatrical," Lester says. ''The way they use physical gesture -- it's very precise. It's like kabuki or commedia."

That kind of highly stylized performance ''fits the play really well, because it was written for a performance style that's very demonstrative, stylized, alive, present," Lester says. ''It's a style that only exists now in circus and in clubs."

Gradually, he and Woodruff developed the idea of making Marivaux's ''island" into a nightclub -- Club Utopia, where a troupe of drag queens forces the play's drama of role reversal and transformation on the marooned aristocrats. ''It creates disorientation for the four survivors," Woodruff says. ''The atmosphere is a bit foreign for them, and also probably for the audience."

The next obvious question was: Where to find the right drag performers? A bit of serendipity solved that problem. ''I was walking down the street," Lester recalls, ''and I passed this extraordinary 7-foot creature. And she called out, 'Gideon!' I didn't recognize her."

But he soon found that he did know her, albeit not in the persona of Mohogoney Brown. Mohogoney, it turns out, is the drag creation of Freddy Franklin, who had a small role as one of the soldiers in the ART's ''Three Sisters."

Franklin was delighted to help the ART explore Boston's drag scene, ultimately bringing a group of ''girls," as they like to be known in character, to the Loeb Center stage. And he says he's happy to be merging these two aspects of his life as a performer.

''I love drag and I love theater," Franklin says, ''and to be able to do both of them in the same venue -- it just touches my heart."

He also sees why drag appealed to Lester and Woodruff as a way of dramatizing Marivaux's themes of oppression and freedom.

''Drag for me is not about being in women's clothes," Franklin explains. ''It's about the empowerment of being a diva: the big hair, the big shoes, the fabulous clothes. It's almost like a cotillion, like a ritual."

It's about liberty, he says. ''I meet people every day who are so enslaved. They'll say, 'I'm going to UMass, studying business, so I can make a lot of money.' And they're miserable. Why? Drag queens, they may come off as arrogant, but they're really in touch with themselves. They're very comfortable with themselves."

Franklin has been working with the other girls to choreograph their movements, something he often does for the drag shows he performs in. He finds himself using the familiar gestures of drag -- ''very grand, supermodelesque, big arms, big hands" -- but to unfamiliar ends.

''Here we're challenged to take our drag and influence the spirit of the play," Franklin says. ''I've tried hard not to make it, 'Oh, there's drag queens onstage' but to find ways of working with the play to deepen it. That's been very challenging."

For his part, Lester believes the drag performers will add depth not only to the play but also to the audience's experience of it.

''They're so demonstrative; they free up the slaves. They become a model of freedom, and then they're also a bit coercive," Lester says. But that's what drag is about, he argues, and that's why it works so well here.

''It's about escape," he says. ''It's about surprise."

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.