The
Misanthrope
Artists
Repertory Theatre, 1516 SW Alder St., 241-1278
7 pm Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays
Closes June 27
$16.50-$25.
According to poet and Molière translator Richard
Wilbur, "Tartuffe is the King Lear of comedy."
If so, then The Misanthrope is comedy's Hamlet.
Though the misanthrope of the title, Alceste, hasn't quite
inspired the library of analyses and theories that surrounds
the Dane, he remains one of drama's most complex and compelling
creations. Director Dennis Bigelow's take on Alceste in the
current ART production is quite unique and, aided by a powerful
performance from David Ivers, wholly successful.
Molière premiered The Misanthrope in 1666
to an unappreciative court audience hostile to its innovation.
Literary critic Northrop Frye wrote, "The tendency of comedy
is to include as many people as possible in its final society,"
a custom Molière minded in his other work. But with
The Misanthrope he tore this tendency to shreds.
In the character of Alceste, Molière launched a full
attack on the plague of custom in his own society, pushing
a comedy of manners too close to satire for his audience's
comfort. Moreover, there was a rawness to the writing as
well as an urgency. The sybaritic pack at court sensed that
Alceste's opinions were those of his creator and were not
amused; Molière subsequently pulled the play. Yet
the work lived on. Boileau thought the play was Molière's
masterpiece and maintained that it evinced the playwright's
superiority to Racine. Rousseau was haunted by the play
and put forward the case for portraying Alceste as a truly
Romantic hero.
In this century, Alceste has inspired a number of remarkable
productions. In Britain alone, three different adaptations--by
Tony Harrison, Neil Bartlett and Martin Crimp--appeared
over an 18-year period to attack the falseness, venality
and crassness of Tory rule (grad student thesis alert).
ART's production is the premiere of a new translation and
adaptation by Lauren Goldman Marshall, a Seattle playwright
who has married Molière to the music scene of the
Northwest. Here, Alceste has become an iconic musician who
rails against the hypocrisy and treachery that swirls around
him; anyone familiar with Kurt Cobain's story will immediately
recognize parallels. Quickly dubbed "the Grunge Molière,"
Marshall's adaptation is anything but a mercenary gimmick.
Her Misanthrope is a shrewd and witty response to
Molière, written with a striking command of the iambic
pentameter superior to both Crimp's and Bartlett's attempts.
As Alceste, Ivers offers a character study of great intricacy.
Part scathing observer of an ego-warped culture, part portrait
of a man drowning, Ivers' Alceste (like Bigelow's entire
production) strikes the perfect pitch between comedy and
tragedy--where Molière's greatest work belongs. Ivers
allows us at first to admire the nobility of Alceste's integrity
while reveling in his acerbic assessment of the world. Gradually,
this integrity seems more like brave obstinacy, which in
turn leads to fears that the character is trapped by a rigid
idealism. Molière biographer Ramón Fernandez
called The Misanthrope "the story of a will power
that goes bankrupt," an apt description for what Ivers achieves.
Alceste's battle for purity and honesty is a Pyrrhic victory,
ending in internal exile. From there, one almost imagines
Alceste becoming David Thewlis' character, Johnny, in Mike
Leigh's Naked--a damaged, poisoned intellectual who
nonetheless earns our respect for his dogged determination.
Bigelow's production is also noteworthy for the rest of
his cast, all of whom have had a miserable season of work.
Karen Trumbo, who has done nothing of note for years, makes
a gloriously Goth Arsinoé. Leif Norby and Michaela
Watkins also contribute good performances, especially Watkins
as the prudent and wise Éliante. There are excellent
comic performances by Jesse N. Holmes, Jeff Marchant, Antonio
Sonera and Devan McCoy. (I especially enjoyed McCoy's rendition
of the letter scene, though I fear I was the only one who
laughed.) The superb Jami Chatalas is back in form as the
hedonic Célimène, though she loses her lines'
nuances at times through rushing. Curt Enderle's set, a
shingled cottage and deck, is excellent. Jeff Forbes lighting
and Martin John Gallagher's sound are of the highest standards.
Bigelow's direction is deft, as is his handling of the
text. Theater in Portland seldom offers intelligent explorations
of the classics, which suffer more than any other form of
drama from the totalitarianism of the mediocre. Usually,
verse is whipped into a manic trot of incomprehensibility,
for fear of offending modern sensibilities with complex
language, poetry or ideas. Bigelow himself has jettisoned
text for inane stage business in the past, famously making
a dog's dinner of Stoppard's brilliant Arcadia. But
as was shown with his Molly Sweeney, Bigelow can
be a faithful servant to a play's essence when not driven
to reduce work for mob consumption.
Goethe wrote, "Molière is so great that we are always
newly astonished whenever we confront him." Bigelow's production
of The Misanthrope offers such astonishment.
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Willamette Week | originally
published June 9, 1999
|
