Ever-Fresh and Always Timely Comedy

Tartuffe
by Moliere
Verse translation by Richard Wilbur
Presented by Soulpepper Theatre
Directed by László Marton

The French playwright Moliere is famed as one of the truly great authors of comedy in the entire history of the theatre.  Among his plays, Tartuffe is one of the best, and one of the most popular too.  I find this curious because the script totally skewers one of the great sacred cows -- religious belief and practice -- by showing how it all too often descends into arrant and arrogant hypocrisy.  Moliere's blunt take on this kind of false piety led to the church hierarchy banning the play when it was first performed.  I also wonder if observant followers of religion see themselves in this play or laugh at what seem like portraits of hypocrites known to them.  At any rate, the play is always timely because smooth operators who manipulate our emotions for their own ends are always with us, even when religious belief isn't the cloak they choose behind which to conceal their schemes.

This production used the now-classic verse translation into English by Richard Wilbur.  It's odd that normally I don't like plays written in rhyming verse (I've become very tired of A Midsummer Night's Dream, to name one) but in this case I don't mind.  Wilbur's versification flows easily and naturally, and his choices of rhyme are both clever and unforced.  It's a very suitable feeling for a play which was originally written also in rhyming verse.

The one feature of the play that always jars me a little is the officer's laudatory speech about King Louis XIV.  Moliere actually wrote himself into a trap here, a trap in which the villain had so thoroughly won the entire contest that only a royal or divine deus ex machina could get him and his characters out of the mess they were in.  But of course the play was written for court performance, and any artist preparing new work for such a powerful ruler would have to know for certain which side of the bread ought to be buttered!

Director László Marton has chosen to stage the play in modern dress and a very plain set, using a style close to farce.  That in itself is no bad thing -- the script certainly isn't period-specific.  But even with that being so, the opening is a rather confusing choice.  The actors come on and dress themselves with costumes and wigs out of the period of Louis XIV, taken from two large costume racks.  These are then wheeled off, the final pieces of furniture and walls are rolled into position, and the play begins -- but in modern clothes.  The period clothes and wigs are never used, although the costume racks make a brief re-appearance.  This all seemed pointless to me.

The only other directorial choice that bothered me was the frequent ascent of the actors into full-out screaming.  Problem: it's unintelligible.  It might be argued that the emotion counts far more than the actual words of the text, but even if we allow that it's just plain unpleasant.  This needed to be tamed just a little, bringing the screaming down far enough that the words could still be heard.  That's a fine line to judge, but in the Baillie Theatre at the Young Centre (a rather intimate space) there is really no excuse for words getting lost in the shuffle in any way.

Well, what of the actors?  As is predictable with Soulpepper, you get a strong cast with some familiar faces and a number of less-familiar.

Among the former group, Raquel Duffy was splendid in the role of Elmire until the end of the seduction scene when she started getting into screaming mode.  Oliver Dennis did fine work as Orgon, the credulous deceived man.  His anger when he turned on his son Damis was credible because it didn't go over the edge -- just skirted it.  Gregory Prest made a strong Cléante,  An open, honest facial expression carries this character far, and that -- together with a caring manner that didn't preclude strength of persuasion were all there in Prest's performance.  In the smaller role of M. Loyal, the bailiff, William Webster was masterful in his turn-on-a-dime switches between coaxing gentleness and forceful dominance.

Diego Matamoros brought the house down as the hypocritical Tartuffe, and with good reason.  His smooth delivery of the two-faced lines of the part was a delight, as was his physical activity in the table scene, darting rapidly from place to place to look for spies.

And yet, my favourite performance of the entire cast came from among the younger, less known actors.  As the maid, Dorine, Oyin Oladejo had a much bigger role than usually assigned to servant characters, and she made the most of every moment of it.  Voice, gesture, facial expression, all were employed to show exactly what she thought of the idiotic antics of her social superiors at the same time that she was earnestly hunting for ways to help them out.  I'm sure we will hear more from this gifted actor!

Colin Palangio as Damis did a fine job with a difficult, rather two-dimensional character.  However, I wonder why the costume designer Victoria Wallace thought fit to dress him like he'd just come in from visiting a gay leather bar.  Katherine Gauthier as Mariane, his sister, was the one serious misfire among the major roles.  She played Mariane as about twenty going on twelve, and that sloped rapidly downwards when she got angry until she was throwing a four-year-old toddler tantrum right on stage.  Not funny, just embarrassing.

Well, it's one of the perils of tackling such a well-known classic that many people will arrive in the theatre with some preconceived idea of how the piece ought to be done.  I'm not arguing for too much statuesque, classical gravity here, or for relying solely on text with no action, but I did feel that this production went too far in the other direction at times.  Certainly it was funny, and I laughed a great deal, but there were times when the words "less is more" were popping into my mind at some of the excesses on the stage.  Definitely entertaining, but by no means the last word on this play.