NORTH COAST REP DOESN’T JUST
HEIGHTEN TARTUFFE, IT LEVITATES IT
Let’s not bandy words. The North Coast Repertory Theatre revival of Molière‘s comedy Tartuffe is a brilliant success. The production is one of those rare instances in which the greatness of the play unites with a faultless cast and masterful staging to produce a genuinely memorable theatrical and dramatic experience.
Katie Karel, Bo Foxworth, Shanté DeLoach
Tartuffe opened in Paris in 1664 and became a controversial sensation. Molière portrayed the title character as a religious hypocrite and con man who worms his way into the household of a wealthy Frenchman named Orgon, selling himself as a man of piety and virtue. He wins the favor of Orgon and the resentment of the rest of the household, who collectively recognize Tartuffe as a manipulating fraud.
Kate Rose Reynolds, Bruce Turk
But Orgon brooks no criticism of the scoundrel and eventually signs over his house and estate to the conniving interloper, ultimately leaving Tartuffe master and Orgon penniless and perhaps headed to jail. Then, when it looks bleakest for the good guys Tartuffe is exposed and Orgon’s fortunes are restored in a highly improbable but satisfying ending.
Kate Rose Reynolds, Bruce Turk, Christopher M. Williams
The play has an odd structure. Tartuffe does not appear in person for the first hour of the play with the audience discovering Tartuffe’s hypocrisy in various conversations and arguments between Orgon and his mother Mademoiselle Pernelle, who also trusts Tartuffe, and among others in the manse. The comedy has little physical action, consisting mostly of speeches and long debates. The North Coast Rep is using the famous rhyming couplets translation by American poet Richard Wilbur, put to magnificent verbal use by the ensemble.
Jared Van Heel, Shanté DeLoach
One of the chief virtues of the production — which opened on March 10 — is its refusal to play the show for cheap laughs. The key scene in the play is Tartuffe’s first entry into Orgon’s home. The audience has been hearing descriptions of the man and now he stands stoically in the flesh at Orgon’s doorway. He isn’t a clown but an intense, sinister-looking figure barefoot in a shabby garment. The viewer immediately grasps that Tartuffe is extremely dangerous and Orgon has put himself and his household in peril. Suddenly the play has turned ominous.
Jared Van Heel, Katie Karel, Shanté DeLoach
But Tartuffe is still a very funny play. Perhaps the best-known comic scene appears in the second act. The lecherous Tartuffe has been continually on the make for Orgon’s wife Elmire, so she arranges to catch the man in the act of forcing himself on her. She invites Tartuffe to a feigned salacious meeting, with Orgon secretly hidden under the dining room table as an observer. As Tartuffe makes his attentions vividly clear, Orgon is so horror-struck by the man’s perfidy that he fails to reveal himself to rescue his wife; Elmire has to desperately scramble around the room to avoid her assailant until Oregon reveals himself. It’s a masterpiece of frantic farce that had the audience howling.
(on table) Bruce Turk, Melanie Lora (under) Bo Foxworth
Heroes abound in sharing the success of Tartuffe. Director Richard Baird has taken his ten performers and molded them into a seamless acting ensemble. Bruce Turk‘s Tartuffe, of course, is the play’s center of gravity but the anchor is really Bo Foxworth‘s self-righteous Orgon. And in the spirit of a typical Moliere housemaid, Katie Karel‘s Dorine eventually takes charge with her savvy and saucy wit. Shanté DeLoach and Jared Van Heel are a charming pair of young lovers and Melanie Lora shows great bravery under fire as the target of Tartuffe’s lust.
Bruce Turk, Bo Foxworth
The praising continues for Kandis Chappell as Mme Pernelle, Tartuffe’s stubborn advocate; Rogelio Douglas III as Orgon’s hot-blooded son Damis; Christopher M. Williams as Cleante, Orgon’s moderation-seeking brother-in-law; and Kate Rose Reynolds, who pops up in an assortment of unexpected guises.
Bo Foxworth, Kandis Chappell
The physical staging takes us back to the Baroque Paris of the 1660s with superb fidelity. Marty Burnett has created a perfect single stage-wide replication of a Baroque interior. Elisa Benzoni‘s many period costumes are pure 17th-century fashionable French wardrobe. The props codesigned by Tessia Iadicicco and Matt FitzGerald accurately fill out all the set’s topical interior needs. The honor role is completed by Ian Scot‘s sound design and Peter Herman‘s hair and wig designs.
(seated) Melanie Lora, Shanté DeLoach, (back) Rogelio Douglas III,
Kandis Chappell, Kate Rose Reynolds, Katie Karel, Christopher M. Williams
Railed against as a sacrilegious outrage by the Church, Moliere’s Tartuffe was banned from performance by Louis XIV in 1664. But the scintillating scandal of the censored play drew much public attention and it finally received its premiere in 1667, grossing unprecedented box office figures. Because religious hypocrisy — specifically “affected zeal and pious knavery” — never goes out of fashion, Tartuffe is forever. And so is this production, a must for all theatergoers.
photos by Aaron Rumley
Tartuffe
North Coast Repertory Theatre
987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive in Solana Beach
Wed and Thurs at 7; Fri at 8; Sat at 2 & 8; Sun at 2 & 7
ends on March 31, 2024 EXTENDED to April 6, 2024
for tickets ($54 – $79), call 858.481.1055 or visit North Coast Rep
