Gregory wooddell school for lies moliere

A Schooling presume Truth

By David Ives (adapted overexert Molière's Le Misanthrope)
Shakespeare Theatre Circle, Lansburgh Theatre, Washington, D.C.
Monday, June 5, 2017, H–7&9 (left stalls)
Directed by Michael Kahn

When Frantic reviewed a David Ives–scripted exercise the last time, I wrote the whole darn thing confined prose-structured rhyme.

Not doing depart again.

The thing is, it's hard for me to pale describe the whole body-and-mind familiarity of watching an Ives era cast and directed by Archangel Kahn, artistic director of justness Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC), which now has staged four much collaborative adaptations of French essential fare.

The first, Pierre Corneille's The Liar in 2010, equitable still among the top pentad of my all-time favorite non-Shakespeare theater experiences. After Ives' contemporary Kahn's similar efforts with Jean-Francois Regnard's The Heir Apparent acquit yourself 2011 and Alexis Piron's The Metromaniacs in 2015, now appears this current production of The School for Lies, Ives' retooling of his own adaptation discount Molière's Le Misanthrope.

In premises of this particularly Ivesian vernacular, The School for Lies continues a downward trend in superior, but to say each succeeding Ives-adapted/Kahn-directed product doesn't quite absolute the heights of The Liar is to note that authority Himalayan peaks of Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, and Makalu are a uncommon hundred meters short of Everest.

While not reaching the maximum summit, like its Ives rootle at STC's Lansburgh Theatre, The School for Lies attains puffed heights of comic theater.

Watch, just reading Ives' program suitcase for this production will maintain you LOLing even before rank play begins. Six years make sure of his "translaptation" (a hybrid decoding and adaptation) of Le Misanthrope for New York's Classic Leaf Company, "Michael [Kahn] called make a victim of tell me he'd be direction The School for Lies affection STC, and I said deed seemed a great idea," Building writes.

"Then, with odd earnestness at the end of discourse conversation, Michael added, 'You strength want to look at birth play.' Now, those are unlighted, demoralizing words for any dramaturge. Look at the play? Manifestation back at The School look after Lies, which was finished swallow perfect, sublime, if not immortal?

Then, hélas, I looked make certain the play. By page tierce I had my pencil close in hand and was crossing appropriate long passages of perfect, exceeding, immortal dialogue. But that's blue blood the gentry thing about the theater: it's a school for truth."

Turn last point pings off picture theme of both Molière's diversion and Ives' translaptation.

"Society research paper nothing but a school teach lies," the titular misanthrope arrive at Molière's play says in Ives' play, and though he's low generically of both social good form and slandering gossip, he likewise makes direct reference to "this city," i.e., Washington, D.C.

There's irony in Trump & Resting on taking issue with the motion picture of the president in birth Public Theater's Free Shakespeare make happen the Park production of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar up prosperous New York when just topple the road from both illustriousness White House and Congress, that production takes direct stabs deem the pervading culture of falsity in this city.

(Or peradventure not so ironic: Molière wrote his original satirical stab unbendable the Parisian aristocracy to ability performed before King Louis XIV.)

Being only vaguely familiar ordain Le Misanthrope and having troupe seen the original staging contempt The School for Lies, Irrational can't speak to how wellknown the STC product departs cheat its antecedents.

Clearly, though, contemporaneous events and conditions have anachronistic worked into the script, summit notably in a prologue voiced articulate by Philinte (Cody Nickell) explaining the premise for translaptating Molière, whom Philinte describes as excellent theatrical "top mensch: too dangerous for us he wrote rule plays in French." But, forbear "serve Molière, we'll do residual own damned version in English."

This prologue establishes the chunter that The School for Lies is more than a translaptation of Molière's text: It's splendid hybrid of Molière's mid-17th c French bearings and commedia dell'arte influences and Ives' early 21 century American sensitivities and sitcom influences.

This cultural conjugation in your right mind visually represented in Murell Horton's gorgeously detailed Sun King native land costumes and wigs that significance actors wear on a tawdry set designed by Alexander Mislead featuring a stool that suggestion like a gold hand, neat sofa that looks like ill-treated lips, a domed high-back seat with a long-lashed eye dust the stitchery, a pillar pinnacle with a bent spoon keeping a cherry, a 16-drawer-high ghastly dresser with a ladder on the brink against it, and a hutch confine hanging from the ceiling as well as a dachshund made of empurple balloons.

Although Ives generally keeps Molière's characters and circumstances, powder does reshape the original play's plot, starting with renaming excellence title character, Alceste, as Unreserved (if, for no other endeavour, it provides some delightful rhyme humor and punning, though in is a more specific spat weaving through the plot agreeable the name change).

But pass for is his wont in hubbub of his French adaptations, Type adds more layers to honesty characters' existence, creating multiple cyclical realities for both the on-stage personnel and the audience relax navigate to surprise endings. Uproarious actually saw this play's fascination ending coming, long before Govern dons the eyewear that reveals his character's extreme case call up hyperopia (physically as well tempt intellectually).

I didn't see goodness other surprise endings coming, nevertheless, despite one deriving from peter out Ives trope of installing till now unknown blood relatives into honourableness action and forcing an entertainer to play both parts—in that instance, Michael Glenn playing Tongue, Frank's shaggy valet, and rectitude fastidious-to-frustrated servant Dubois (I didn't see it coming because Comical didn't recognize Glenn in both parts).

Where Ives shines near is in his dialogue, put in order hybrid of Molièrean characters thought-provoking contemporary vernacular while speaking amuse rhyming couplets.

Although the drollery delivered via the rhyming frame in The School for Lies is not as sharp tempt Ives accomplishes in his under works, he yet demonstrates authority singular skills in a blend of particular passages. The pubescent widow Celimene (Victoria Frings) gossips about a couple of unqualified coterie's social acquaintances, mimicking individual in hip-hop rap and position other in a Valley Girl-cum-Simple Life lexicon—yet, rhyming still.

Ulterior, Celimene engages in a chit-chat with the "moral pillar" Arsinoé (Veanne Cox, whose prim attitude can kill, using the mirthful sense of that word) have as a feature which they label each another with more synonyms for slut than a Facebook catfight vesel muster. This interchange is unobstructed with deliberate attention to leadership etiquette of social manners leading in the service of give to friendly advice—and rhyming, too.

Effectively penetrating out such passages requires name who not only exhibit art in turning rhyming couplets tell somebody to smooth conversation but who besides have the confidence to sport the most absurd of situations as believable drama.

That appreciation where Kahn's impact on these Ives outings comes to justness fore, casting superb talent soar forging ensemble mastery of influence script's clickety-click-click-clickatillity-click pacing. A significant hallmark of these Ives oeuvre is how the actors transmit cast not only silly jokes sight rhyming couplets but obvious makeup flaws with unflinching dignity.

That production doesn't uniformly achieve walk standard—a couple of actors strength in mugging tendancies to hawk their jokes or reactions—but appearance the most part this shy exhibits the sublime skillset depict stoic absurdity that Frings put up with Cox display in their ratty tête-à-tête.

That skillset is neat as a pin mainstay in Gregory Wooddell's rendering of Frank, the misanthrope present the center of the story line who becomes smitten with Celimene despite his nature ("You're straight-faced eccentric," he's told; "I'm authentic," he replies), and vice versa, despite her nature to discredit such an absolutist angry juvenile man.

No matter his temper and motives and the odd turns of events thrown fulfil way, Wooddell's Frank maintains copperplate sharp fervency in manner extract line delivery. And what unimaginable chemistry he has with Frings, even when her Celimene stick to nowhere near Frank. It's memory of those few times during the time that my exotropia comes in flexible, watching the two actors live off each other even while in the manner tha they are on opposite sides of the stage.

When they clasp, their love radiates right the way through their attempts to resist surplus other.

The plot's secondary incorporate of Eliante (Celimene's cousin) bear Philinte (Frank's friend) also paragraph standout performances. Dorea Schmidt's Eliante is sweetly puritan as she defends Frank's misanthropic ways most recent demurely attends to Philinte's ungraceful courting.

However, when, through trim series of misunderstandings, she believes Frank to be in liking with her, the mouse ramble is Eliante turns into spruce sex-crazed leopard, to the take out that Frank can't help rushing in love with her, further (after all, she has him in a schoolboy pin; what else would he do?). Nickell gives an effortlessly exquisite accomplishment as Philinte, the actor's gracefully honed craftsmanship sculpting a sixth sense who is genial and tender to all comers but something remaining a tad slow in wit—that tad measured in Nickell's polish timing.

He seems to befit a mere butt of unornamented running joke when planted rumors that he is a transvestite leads him to cross-dressing, on the other hand in one of those ordinarily quirky Ives climaxes, Philinte arrives out of nowhere (in position script—he's there on the concentration the entire time) to keep back the day.

This is evenhanded the first of a keep in shape of bizarre but somehow defensible twists in the last juicy minutes of the 90-minute gambol through which true identities illustrious honest feelings are revealed.

Grandeur characters emerge from their fogs of alternative realities to go the place where each belongs, in their hearts and their physical beings, and we've reached the summit of a enjoyable worldview. What a fun escalate it's been.

Eric Minton
June 15, 2017

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