William Shakespeare (1564-1616) entertains his free Shakespeare in the Park audiences at Manhattan’s Central Park’s Delacorte Theater every late spring and summer. Not to be outdone, Jean-Baptiste Poquellin, known as Molière (1622-73), gets to wow audiences during the same time of year since 2018 when Molière in the Park bowed at Brooklyn’s LeFrak Center in Prospect Park.
A nifty pairing of playwrights when you consider that the near-contemporaries regularly dealt – and still deal – with similar characters and themes prominent during those centuries. Not the least are the focal men in their works who are not only arrogant and foolish but are regularly shown up by women.
No need to give a list of examples – okay, Lear is more of a fool than his fool – but Orgon in Molière’s Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite, is another middle-aged dupe. He’s being held up to ridicule once again in this year’s Molière in the Park offering, a production as welcome in the surroundings as Tartuffe himself is not welcome to most of the members of Orgon’s immediate family.
Tartuffe (Matthew Rauch) is, of course, one of the most delectable villains in theater annals. Wielding religion as if it were a hammer to suppress every gullible person in the vicinity, he has not only completely bamboozled Orgon (Yonatan Gebeyehu), but he’s contrived it so that the household head is on the verge of forking over the family inheritance.
Orgon’s hardheadedness prompts other countermanding contrivances, the ultimately successful one plotted by Orgon’s wife Elmire (Michelle Veintimilla), who figures out a way to turn Tartuffe’s invidious courtship of her into his defeat.
In the LeFrak Center presentation, Molière’s three acts have been trimmed to 80 minutes, ostensibly by George Forestier, who’s billed as taking on “original play restitution.” Perhaps the downsizing is in part because students are invited to the unusual number of afternoon performances, and their attention spans for the classics is thought (rightly?) to be limited.
Gone are several characters, notably Orgon daughter Mariane and suitor Valere. Replacing their central threatened romance are Orgon’s son Damis (Keshav Moodliar) and lively maid Dorine (Kaliswa Brewster).
But never fear. Translator Maya Slater is up to no modern language translation, a movement emerging here and there these days to keep 21st-century audiences involved. What she gallantly hasn’t done is abandon Moliere’s iambic hexameter’s rhyming couplets. Allowing the occasional off-rhyme, she generally proves herself clever.
On Alex Jourdan’s in-the-round boxing-ring set with smaller risers, the eight actors – Kim Awan, Luis Vega, Thijs Hogenboom, also among them – bite into Molière’s language and action with wholehearted fervor. Their attack, under Lucie Tiberghen’s direction, is more stentorian than absolutely necessary but understandable in the outdoor circumstances. Their enthusiasm at portraying Molière’s figures forgives any other lapse.
Since 1664, when Tartuffe premiered in Louis IV’s court, actors have grabbed the part as a marvelous opportunity to own the spotlight. (Stoli Stolnack is the lighting designer here.) Molière, no fool as actor. wrote Tartuffe for himself and probably had some idea that this was a role for the ages. Rauch — also a seasoned Shakespearean and perhaps still not properly ranked as a current dramatic leading man — delivers the charlatan’s hypocritical piety not as blatantly sinister but with dignified subtlety. As a result, his malevolence is even more insidious.
It’s a statement smartly understood by costumer Jessica Irvin, who has dressed Tartuffe in solemn black, but she’s adorned the hem of his shortish tunic with gold filigree and accessorized the look with gilded black slippers. Very sly about the man’s true interest, no?
No matter when plays are written, they often lend themselves to new interpretations during whatever contemporary atmosphere in which they’re revived. In 2023, a spectator might not be criticized at viewing this Tartuffe as doubling for an allegory of today’s United States political environment – with Tartuffe representing a faux-pious former president and the hoodwinked Orgon standing in for the entire GOP. Whether this Tartuffe’s downfall will be contrived by a woman remains to be seen, but maybe E. Jean Carroll has already done some effective tilting at that now-severely-tilted windmill.
Tartuffe opened May 11, 2023, at Prospect Park’s LeFrak Center (Brooklyn) and runs through May 27. Tickets and information: moliereinthepark.org
