Molière, No Holds Barred

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by christopher grobe | Dec 9, 2007 1:59 pm

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Posted to: Arts

French classical comedy is usually a drama of the superego. Guarded and aloof, characters float around the stage revealing their passions more often with a raised eyebrow or an off-color metaphor than with anything as gauche as a raised voice. The Yale Repertory Theatre’s current production of Molière’s Tartuffe is decidedly not of that ilk. Instead, director Daniel Fish hands this version over completely to the primal chaos of the raving id.

Tartuffe (subtitled “The Imposter”) depicts the perilous fallout of one man’s gullible belief in a pious hypocrite. Although every member of his family pleads with him to believe that Tartuffe is in fact a lewd, ruthless schemer, Orgon retains him as a bosom friend and quashes every objection by asserting his authority as man of the house. His daughter Mariane is promised to her sweetheart Valère, but Orgon insists that she marry Tartuffe. His wife Elmire and his son Damis try to warn Orgon of Tartuffe’s efforts to cuckold him, but Orgon will hear none of it. By the time Tartuffe’s manifold treacheries come to light, the imposter has a firm stranglehold on the reputations, property, and fate of Orgon’s family.

Fish’s Tartuffe boldly departs from the veiled, ironic tone that normally characterizes productions of Molière. Where a run-of-the-mill production would rest content with Tartuffe’s demeaning innuendo toward a servant-wench, Fish gives us all-out sexual molestation. Where a traditional production would stop at subtextual perturbation, Fish directs the actor playing the romantically thwarted Valère to rip off his clothing piece by piece in a near-murderous rage. Where Orgon might usually overturn a chair or two in his frantic search for a damning object, Fish has him (almost literally) tear the room apart. The style might be described as “Sam Shepard does Molière.”

There is something awesome about the sheer volatility of Molière’s characters as directed by Daniel Fish. However, while Fish’s approach—ceaselessly exposing the volcanic tensions underneath Molière’s text—often draws riveting and suprising performances out of his cast, it also forces them to pronounce large swathes of Molière’s subtle text in a shrill, sarcastic tone that, even by the end of the first act, has grown a bit old.

Fish’s attempt to strip away the famed artifice of classical French comedy continues in the production’s stage design. The majority of the stage is decorated as a grand, somber art museum, complete with a pacing, burgundy-jacketed security guard. Tucked away stage left, in stark contrast to the overwhelming plainness of the rest of the stage, is a beautifully baroque bedroom with wild wallpaper, a glittering chandelier, and an opulent canopied bed.

There’s one catch, though: we, the audience, can see only so much of this room. All but the first ten feet or so disappears into the wings. When scenes take place in the rest of the room—which they frequently do in the first act—we have to rely on a roaming camerawoman (the very image of a contemporary film student in sneakers, skinny jeans, and a baggy T-shirt), whose live feed of the action is projected onto classical-artwork-sized screens sunken into the museum walls. “This is fetishized artifice,” the set screams, the video intones ... the director insists.

I do not usually speak so insistently of the director’s intentions, as distinct from the work of the designers and actors, but this production is clearly the work of an auteur-director. And while Fish does succeed in brushing the dust off an old classic and in drawing many smart and passionate ideas out of the play, I wish he would have eased his vice-grip a bit—especially (irony of ironies!) in an anti-authoritarian rendition of an anti-dogmatic play. Creatively speaking, the actors often barely have room to breathe.

What is more, some of his strong choices seem wildly undermotivated. Why does Valère wear a 21st century tracksuit after his wrathful striptease? Why do characters, in insignificant moments, suddenly recognize the presence of the present-day security guard and camerawoman only to forgot they exist a scene or a second later? None of these (or other such) anomalies persist as generalizable conventions, nor do they acquire any further meaning than what they have in that first shocking instant of their introduction. Some might defend this hodge-podge as postmodern pastiche, but to this viewer’s eyes, it simply seemed overwrought and under-thought.

Yet despite these caveats, I would still recommend the production based on its full cast of riveting performances. Zach Grenier’s Tartuffe pulses with the repulsive charm of, say, Shakespeare’s Richard III. Michael Rudko captures Orgon’s painful sincerity without condescending to the character in the least, and when Orgon finally accepts the truth, Rudko brilliantly balances displays of anger and desolation. Christina Rouner also gives a top-notch, rangy performance as Orgon’s wife Elmire, imbuing her with vulnerability, intelligence, and uncommon strength.

In fact, the entire cast follows the director’s uneven course with an earnestness, zeal, and virtuosity that, ultimately, are both endearing and engaging.

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