Playwright: Moliere, translated
by Ranjit Bolt
At: Bruised Orange Theater Company at Prop Thtr, 3502-4 N. Elston Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 539-7838; $20
Runs through: Feb. 5
It takes us a while to recognize the beer-swilling grungster napping on the sofa at center stage as the fashionable Mme. Celimene's servant, but once the Mssrs. Alceste and Philinte enter, likewise garbed in thrift-shop chic, arguing in impeccable blank verse over the merits of their corrupt, superficial, fun-seeking society, we understand where director Mark Spence plans to take us.
And why shouldn't he? Are we, really, THAT far removed from Moliére's court circles, in this country where every citizen may claim entitlement to privileges once granted only to the wealthy and pedigreed? Do Americans in 2006 not still relish gossip? Do the ambitious not continue to curry favor with the powerful and influential? And do those who decry this behavior not make exception for themselves and those they love?
To be sure, the transposition of a 17th-century fable to modern sensibilities is not always smooth. It is difficult nowadays to imagine a cool cookie like Celimene putting up with so verbally abusive a suitor as the puritanical Alceste, though the decision to make one of her swains a leather-jacketed, navel-ringed WOMAN lends a fresh dimension to the subterfuge employed by the correspondent when an accusing Alceste confronts her with a love letter addressed to persons unnamed.
This Bruised Orange production is assisted by Ranjit Bolt's playful translation, which retains the rhymed couplets while engaging in such delicious wordplay as 'Your uppance has now come!' The actors prove uniformly adept at imposing conversational phrasing on their metered text, while lobbing philosophical observations at the audience. ( Though Noe McDonald's Alceste has a tendency to spray saliva during his more declamatory speeches—a practice perhaps forgivable at Shakes-on-the-Pier, but not in a small and chilly room like the studio at Prop Thtr ) .
Ultimately, however, the author's plea for tolerance of human foibles wins the day. As the easygoing Philinte, played with reassuring presence by Clint Sheffer, warns his irate chum, 'My phlegm's good sense. Your bile, a mistake.' In an imperfect world, what can we do but accept the silly and the selfish—Paris Hilton, P. Diddy, 'the war on Christmas' and all—and make the best of them?