Stratford Festival 2017 # 5: Yet More Hypocrisy

It didn't strike me until I sat down to write this review that both plays I saw on my second full day at Stratford were comedies concerned with hypocrisy.  Moliere's Tartuffe is one of the great treasures of the world theatre, an evergreen comedic examination of hypocrisy, obsession, and the all-too-common human blind spot.  Ranjit Bolt's English translation, like most predecessors, sticks to the metre and rhyming couplets of the original text, but does so effectively and in a contemporary mode (there are a couple of f-bombs dropped).

Sadly, director Chris Abraham and his company developed a real blind spot when it came to the staging of this play.  The result was as close to a dud as any production I can ever recall seeing at Stratford.

Tartuffe is a tricky play in which comic elements are mingled with farcical.  Some directors choose to play it as a comedy with farcical moments.  Some choose to play it as a farce with more mannered comedic scenes.  There are multiple approaches that work very well.

What went wrong here?  Did the company fall prey to the old canard that more is better in farce?  I strongly suspect that is the case.  This production suffers from a severe case of overkill that knocks much of the humour right out of the show.

For one thing, the play is allowed to reach the apex of its fast-rising emotional temperature well before the intermission -- the show has already gone far over the top even before the famous seduction scene, normally the peak of the riotous farcical style.

In terms of individual performances, Graham Abbey's Orgon does the most to take the play there.  To see him leaping up and down in rage, actually dancing on the floor in anger, while his voice shoots up into a high-pitched squeal is funny -- for about 10 seconds.  Then what?  Like most toddler tantrums, this one quickly exhausts what little appeal it has.  And that's all by the midpoint of the first act.  Where is the play supposed to go after the intermission?

The saddest result of Abbey's overwrought performance is a distinct feeling that this Orgon deserves everything that he gets.  I'm dead certain that this was not Moliere's intention at all.

Emilio Viera as Damis also gets carried away, too far, too quickly, but at least stays there for only a few seconds at a time.

Maev Beaty's Elmire is much calmer at first, a different but very sophisticated and likable take on the character.  By the time we reach the seduction scene, though, even she lets herself be dragged down into the whirlpool of lunacy, as she becomes a jerky, almost robotic caricature of herself.  

It is Tartuffe himself (Tom Rooney in fine form) who resists the urge to go off the deep end for the most part and gives the play a solid centrepoint around which all the idiocy swirls.  His cold voice and eyes provide a most necessary antidote.  

Of all the household, Mariane (Mercedes Morris) is perhaps the most believably human.  It matters a great deal.  Even in farce, the characters have to remain human beings with whom the audience can identify.  

My personal favourite, and the one bright light in the show, is Anusree Roy in the show-stealing part of the maid, Dorine.  Moliere's plays contain several maids who are bright, pert, smart, sassy, and always ready to give their employers a piece of their mind (a most un-servant-like behaviour in any regulated society).  What makes Roy's Dorine so successful is the matching of her physicality to the sharp whip-crack of her voice.  Her characteristic stance, chin thrust forward, suits her cutting words to perfection.  Here is one character who trod the line between not enough and too much with success, never quite going over the top.

The stage of the Festival Theatre was given a spare but effective set, a stylish, modern house with the main entrance of the home on the upper level of a two-storey tall living room.  Costumes, too, were effective, modern and simple in design -- except for the Officer (E. B. Smith in full thunderous voice) who enters at the end as a deus ex machina to rescue Orgon from his plight in the name of the King.

It's sad to have to level such criticism against Abbey, Beaty, and director Abraham.  All of them have delivered far better work in the past, and will doubtless do so again.  But in theatre, as in all the creative arts, every artist -- no matter how masterful -- has off days and drops the ball on occasion, with a resounding thud.