Four Centuries Later, Religion’s Still the Opiate of Molière’s Masses
TARTUFFE: BORN AGAIN: Theater Review
Just in time for Bastille Day and the 360th anniversary of what is arguably Molière’s best-known play, Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum has staged Freyda Thomas’ adaptation of the French bard’s 1664 farce Tartuffe. Although this updated version resets the original time and place from 1660s Paris to 1980s Louisiana, and is entitled Tartuffe: Born Again, Molière’s theme remains the same. The title character, Tartuffe (David De Santos) is a religious huckster who defrauds the credulous by posing as a pious man of the cloth (even though he strives to strip off said cloth every chance he gets). The zealous conman wheedles his way into the well-to-do but gullible Orgon’s (Lynn Robert Berg) estate and televangelist studio, and has designs on his wife Elmire (Michelle Jasso), even as he plans to wed their daughter Maryann (Isabel Stallings).
Hilarity ensues in this energetic, rollicking retelling of Molière’s priceless parable of the guru and the gullible helmed by WGTB stalwart Melora Marshall. This 400th anniversary iteration includes music (sound design by Marshall McDaniel and Kellen McDaniel), dancing, physical comedy, rhyming zingers that occasionally combine English with French and more. As the lascivious “preacher” gets bawdy while he cries to the lawdy, lawdy, lawdy, Tartuffe almost strips down to the buff, and as he seeks to seduce Elmire she also appears onstage in Victoria’s not-so-secret lingerie. Although it’s all tastefully (and tastily) performed in good fun, this high-spirited spoof of sexuality and religion does not seem age appropriate for children. (The preceding has been a paid announcement by the Topanga Canyon Babysitters Guild—hey, a thee-a-tuh reviewer has to make a living somehow!)
As Mssr. Molière’s farcical farce has been relocated to Louisiana, Southern accents fly fast and furious across the Theatricum’s boards, which are more accustomed to hearing Shakespearean iambic pentameter. For instance, as Orgon’s patrician mother Madame Pernell, Cynthia Kania’s matriarch sounds as if she just stepped out of the pages of Gone with the Wind. She, too, has been smitten by Tartuffe’s faux zealotry – until she realizes that the bible thumping sidewinder has swindled the family out of their “plantation.”
Jon Sprik, Jonathan Blandino, Isabel Stallings (photo by Ian Flanders)The South has indeed been the home of many televangelist grifters, so it does make sense to reset Molière’s lampoon of religious hustlers there, especially during the Reagan era. However, during the 1980s I don’t believe flatscreen TVs were invented yet, although for some reason one actually appears onstage in the set designed by Ian Geatz, and airs some Tartuffian televangelical video vignettes (produced by Marshall and Kellen McDaniel with assistant director Berber Heerema). I guess god really does work in mysterious (and Molière-ian) ways.
As the skeptical Dorine, the gifted Tanya Alexander steals Act I, like a kleptomaniac set loose in Saks Fifth Avenue. Alexander was likewise great in another adaptation of a classic, The Fountain Theatre’s take on Frank Capra’s 1941 Meet John Doe. Front and center in the first act, strangely, Dorine disappears largely in Act II, and this cynical character is reduced to being just another background player. Tartuffe doesn’t actually appear onstage until towards the end of Act I, although he’s the subject of most of the dialogue, but once the title character takes to the boards, he’s the onstage focus of the dramatis (comicus?) personae and story.
sabel Stallings and Lynn Robert Berg (photo by Ian Flanders)Another standout in the cast is Lynn Robert Berg, as he is taken in by Tartuffe’s godly guiles, even as he’s being stabbed in the back. With Berg’s bald dome and comedic panache, he brought to mind Phil Silvers as Sgt. Bilko and Richard Deacon as Mel Cooley in another classic sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show.
De Santos is uproarious as the ribald, rascally proselytizer who speaks with forked tongue. Costume designer Vicki Conrad has fun arraying Tartuffe’s sparkly duds, with the cast’s wardrobe supervised by Beth Eslick. De Santos really wigs out in the hair department (also courtesy of Conrad), and what may be his final rug, a blonde hairpiece, is reminiscent of that other world class conman who arose out of tabloids and television (“reality TV,” to be precise), and like Tartuffe hawks and hustles the bible.
I immensely enjoyed this irreverent romp about religion, which 360 years later remains the opiate of Molière’s masses, staged by those WGTB gladiatorial comics at Topanga Canyon’s outdoors arena. And but of course, the most laughable thing about this farce is that the FBI are good guys—that is, unless they mean the “French Bureau of Inanity.” As helmed by Melora Marshall, the WGTB troupe’s Tartuffe is a whirligig of tomfoolery that delights audiences as zany sanctimonious phonies (the original deep fakes?) are harpooned and get their well-deserved comeuppance for being kinky Christly impostors.
Happy Bastille Day and Vive le Nouveau Front Populaire! Hopefully, America will stop the racists, too—and that’s no laughing matter.
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum is presenting Tartuffe: Born Again through October 13 in repertory with: The Winter’s Tale; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Wendy’s Peter Pan; and The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latine Vote at 1419 North Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California 90290. For info and tickets: 310-455-3723; website.
