Like, Totally Tartuffe
A mutant Molière at Pasadena’s Boston Court
By Don Shirley
In the original, the bourgeois householder Orgon is duped by the title character, a sanctimonious houseguest who secretly aspires to seduce Orgon’s wife and eventually to take over his property. Here, Tim Cummings plays Orgon and Antonio Anagaran plays Tartuffe (or rather, according to the program, “The Imposter”). But the two men dress identically, and Cummings speaks Tartuffe’s lines as well as Orgon’s, throwing his voice in order to speak for both characters, while Tartuffe remains mum.
Conceptual reasons aside, it would be difficult for Anagaran to say much – his entire face is obscured by a tight mask that covers his head. He also wears gloves, and only his hands are initially seen, as he beckons Orgon from the sidelines. He looks like an unusually dapper (yet still ski-masked) bank robber.
Are Orgon and Tartuffe supposed to be two sides of the same man? Perhaps, but then why do the other characters interact with both men as they do in the original? Other than the fact most of them naturally resent Tartuffe’s hypocrisies and Orgon’s determination to marry his daughter off to this intruder, they don’t seem to notice that anything else is amiss about this masked man and his Jekyll-and-Hyde-like relationship to Orgon. Is it all Orgon’s dream?
My guess is that Chambers is suggesting that the other characters perceive the usual Tartuffe, but that we see him as Orgon sees him – as a manifestation of his own worst impulses. Chambers is trying to woo us away from our simple conclusions that Tartuffe is a scoundrel, that Orgon is a fool and that most of the other characters are good-hearted victims of the two men’s alliance.
Chambers makes the other characters much more troubled than did the playwright. Orgon’s son (Blake Silver) is fooling around with his stepmother (Teressa Byrne). Her brother Clèante (Matt Foyer) is getting it on with the all-knowing maid (Jaime Andrews) – that is, when Clèante, the play’s most articulate spokesman for moderation, isn’t in some uncharacteristic and unexplained stupor. Orgon’s daughter (Megan Heyn) is an addict who occasionally bursts into song, often in Spanish. Only her suitor (Adam Harrington) and her grandmother (Judith Scarpone) hew closely to the playwright’s original concepts.
Or fairly closely, that is – the production is supposedly set in the present-day San Fernando Valley. But the only way most theatergoers will realize this is to read it in the program. No references to Valley place names or nearby porn shoots are in Donald M. Frame’s 1967 translation. The only hint of the locale is when the words “like, totally” appear among the occasional comments on a big screen over the action, but then those words are hardly restricted to the Valley.
Other aspects of the production are equally elusive. What’s with all the minutely choreographed movements of arms, hands, napkins and underpants? What are we supposed to think is happening in the famous unmasking scene, when Orgon and Tartuffe retreat to opposite sides of the stage instead of being right on top of each other? Near the end, Orgon also begins voicing the words of a minor character who represents Tartuffe’s interests – is this Tartuffe himself, now in drag as well as masked?
If Chambers’ point is the same as Walt Kelly’s – “We have met the enemy, and he is us” – it dulls the edge of Molière’s satire. Orgon becomes pathological, not the naive victim of a charlatan. The real-life Tartuffes – the Bernard Madoffs, the Ted Haggards – would be overjoyed if we blamed ourselves instead of them for their transgressions.
The Chambers vision is so clouded, and so unfunny, that this shouldn’t be anyone’s first experience of Tartuffe. But if you’re tired of the usual Tartuffe routines, this version will certainly grab your attention, even if you’re puzzling over it or swearing at it all the way home.
Tartuffe, Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena, (626) 683-6883. bostoncourt.org. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. $5-$32. Ends March 22.
Published: 02/25/2009
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