Michelle Giroux, Patrick Galligan, Julian Richings, David Storch, Stephen Gartner, Brandon McGibbon, Andrea Runge, Stuart Hughes, and Maria Ricossa. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.
The Misanthrope
By Molière in a version by Martin Crimp
Directed by Richard Rose
Featuring Patrick Galligan, Stephen Gartner, Michelle Giroux, Stuart Hughes, Brandon McGibbon, Julian Richings, Maria Ricossa, Andrea Runge and David Storch
Runs until February 6 @ Tarragon Theatre Mainspace
By Daina Valiulis
From the opening of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” sung in screeching operatic style, one “gets” the Tarragon Theatre’s recent adaptation of Moliere’s masterwork The Misanthrope.
Adapted by Martin Crimp, a celebrated British playwright known for his experimental style, this version has the characters speaking in rhyming couplets and using modern language. The hero, Alceste (Hughes), is a very successful playwright who is in love with (according to Martin Crimp) a materialistic, arse-licking, social game-playing, insecure young starlet called Jennifer, who despite all this, Alceste insists, is, on a deeper level, an extraordinary human being. One subplot involves a female journalist recording Jennifer’s bitingly honest commentary on her peers, which she intends to use in a scandalous exposé. Another subplot involves a bet between two men to determine whether or not one of them can coerce the flirtatious Jennifer to sleep with him.
These storylines, such as they are, however, are buried beneath a blatantly obvious concept, stock characters that have zero likability factor (and therefore no emotional resonance), and irritatingly trite rhyming couplets that are meant to be edgy by using modern language. Everyone on the stage has an iPhone that they want the audience to notice, demonstrating society’s reliance on technology and our reliance upon mass marketing to help us make our own choices in the modern world (even though choosing willingly and actively to buy into that kind of commercialism IS a choice). We have become so post-modern that we have swung full circle back to Moliere’s world in 1666. Once audiences see that this is the “message” and whole point of the production (which is obvious from the start), there is nothing to keep our interest.
The acting is fine and professional, but not enough of a hook to keep one sitting in one’s seat for two hours without squirming. Alceste is seen as a lovable, Charlie Chaplin-like figure: “constantly slipping on a banana peel but always getting up and trying to move on.” Crimp says, “We don’t want the audience to think of Alceste as a moralist they reject out of hand; instead, they should find enjoyment and entertainment in his struggle against the obstacles in his path.” However, the whole piece is so bloated in its concept and overblown in all the characters, that this rejection inevitably occurs almost right away.
The idea that we as a society are blinded by the illusion of personal choice, “masking a society of well-tamed conformists, whose addiction to media-driven fantasies of property and celebrity distracts them from their inability to shape their own lives” is not a new one. Martin Crimp delivers his message loud and clear, drowning out any other elements that make a good play work. There is no subtlety whatsoever in this piece. It would have been more interesting and perhaps more fitting to see a traditional version of Moliere’s The Misanthrope drawing the same parallels and not assuming that the entire audience is a bunch of ignorant consumers. If you find yourself sitting in the audience for this show, it would be best to make like a misanthrope and leave.
