Playwright: Moliére, trans. by Ranjit Bolt
At: Remy Bumppo Theatre Company at Victory Gardens, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 871-3000; $33-$38
Runs through: March 5
Even when it's not a musical, the rhythm of a play's words are important. Moliére wrote his comedies in slow six-beat Alexandrine lines, but for most of the last century, English-speaking audiences know his work through Richard Wilber's translations rendering the text in Shakespearean blank verse. Ranjit Bolt goes even further in his revision, however, not only updating the story's setting to include modern idioms, but reconfiguring the rhyming couplets to iambic quatrameter—yes, EXACTLY like Dr. Seuss—making for dialogue that zips along with the high-stepping playfulness of a Road Runner cartoon. ( Example: 'It's WRITTEN on him—can't you see?/'My wife is going to CHEAT on me!'' )
The story's premise is straightforward enough: Orgon, a bourgeois citizen with government connections, is hoodwinked by Tartuffe, a shyster with one hand on the Bible and the other groping for his host's wife. Director James Bohnen's decision to move the action from 17th-century France to present-day Washington, D.C., inspires some ticklish analogies—in the original, a bolt from the Purple saves the day, but Powerful Influences now intervene in the form of FBI agents and White House insiders to reward loyal party supporters—but overall, the dynamic remains astonishingly familiar.
Moliére's characters discuss Tartuffe's monstrousness for several scenes before we actually see him, so it's something of a shock when he finally enters and we hear issuing forth from actor Nick Sandys, not his customary British inflections, but a back-country southern drawl like the purr of a cat stalking a goldfish. Since Bohnen surrounds him with emoters—Patrick Clear's blustery Orgon, Linda Gillum's perky Elmire, Stephanie Díaz's peppery Dorine, Michael Patrick Sullivan's hot-headed Damis, Margaret Kustermann's imperious Madame Pernelle and Raymond Fox's too-easily-agitated Cleante—the portrait of villainy that emerges is not that of a stereotypical amen-snorter, but a weasely menace far more suited to our time.
There's no mistaking this Remy Bumppo production for a dry academic exercise, however. Tim Morrison's roomy set design allows for copious physical comedy, as well as verbal subtleties, even in the briefest of appearances ( Tony Casale's poker-faced Fed, for example ) . Encore un coup!