Playwright: Moliere
(Richad Wilbur translations)
At: Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
at the Shubert
Phone: (312) 902-1400; $20-$65
Runs through: Feb. 22
Tony Award-winner Brian Bedford, longtime audience favorite at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival, returns to Chicago as actor and director to show how Moliere should be done, assembling a company of top local performers in his purist’s version of two one-act comedies, The School for Husbands and The Imaginary Cuckold.
Moliere’s short plays are not especially original in character or plot, generally recycling popular slapstick Italian commedia of the 16th and 17th Centuries. Most American actors and directors play such material as quickly as possible, wrongly believing that fast and loud equal funny. Moliere’s brilliance was to elevate stock types and situations by linguistic wit and social satire; so the key to success is establishing character and context rather than going for gags. Do Moliere slowly, and let the greatest fool appear a wise man. When you pull the carpet out from under him, you have schadenfreude, a comedy concept Moliere understood and which mirrored his private life.
The School for Husbands is the perfect example. Puritanical, tight-fisted and middle-aged Sganarelle (Bedford) is gulled by the pretty young thing he dotes upon. Every precaution he takes unwittingly propels her into the arms of the young man she really loves. Beyond the sitcom, Moliere satirizes fashions (Paris, 1670’s) and social order. It’s important to hear the words, the exchanges of ideas. Words are less important in The Imaginary Cuckold, which is shorter, slighter traditional slapstick, based on jealous confusions aroused by a lost locket.
This production utilizes the brilliant rhymed-verse translations of Richard Wilbur, the acknowledged Moliere master who surely improves the French originals as he turns them into witty modern English. The design concept is city vs. country. The School for Husbands sports Ming Cho Lee’s Parisian townhouses suggesting Place des Voges elegance, while Jane Greenwood’s city dandy costumes are bright colors, silks, ribbons and lace. For The Imaginary Cuckold, Lee’s rustic woods echo Watteau, while Greenwood supplies buckrum, gabardine and homespun for the bumpkins. Melissa Veal’s wigs are of a standard usually not seen locally, especially Bedford’s long gray locks in Husbands and Brillo pad red curls in Cuckold.
The Moliere Comedies are handsomely mounted, well-acted and charming. Chicago actors Kate Fry, Linda Kimbrough, Matthew Schwader, John Reeger and Michelle Graff particularly strut their stuff and hold their own with Bedford. But for all that, it seems too staid, too pure. Bedford’s subtle, character-driven approach in the first play—certainly intellectually valid—cries out for some outrageous low-comedy takes for which he is famous. The second play has more funny, physical business but is little more than a throw-away piece to balance the evening. The Moliere Comedies are bright, but not dazzling. We want some big laughs that just aren’t there..