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by Pierre Carlet de Marivaux, translated by John Van Burek, directed by Richard Monette

Stratford Festival, Studio Theatre, Stratford

June 30-September 25, 2004

“The Triumph of Gimmicks”

“The Triumph of Love” marks the first appearance of any play by Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688-1763) at the Stratford Festival.  That alone should be cause for celebration since it means Stratford has finally caught up with Europe and America in rediscovering this master of comedy.  John Van Burek’s Pleiades Theatre gave the play its Canadian English-language premiere in Toronto in 2001 in Van Burek’s own translation.  Van Burek’s production clearly demonstrated the self-conscious artifice and subtle psychology that make Marivaux seem so modern.  Though not perfect, it was infinitely superior to director Richard Monette’s current Stratford production that uses Van Burek’s translation but misinterprets key characters and ruins the play’s tone and subtlety.

Marivaux’s comedies provide a link between Molière and the realist drama that would appear a century later.  Marivaux uses devices such as multiple disguises and commedia dell’arte characters inherited from the past but his interest is in psychology not in farce.  In “The Triumph of Love” (1732), Princess Léonide has disguised herself as a man to woo the prince Agis, the man she has loved from afar.  Agis is guarded by brother and sister philosophers Hermocrate and Léontine, who have brought him up since childhood follow their views, to worship reason and abhor passion.  To gain access to Agis, Léonide finds she must court both brother and sister, revealing her disguise to Hermocrate but not to Léontine.  The main source of comedy in the play is in watching how Hermocrate, Léontine and Agis all rationalize their attraction to Léonide and the passion they suddenly feel as their theoretical attachment to reason begins to crumble under the pressure of real emotion.

Working with a fine cast, Monette gets the play right in the exposition in Act 1, in the scenes between Léontine (Claire Jullien) and Hermocrate (James Blendick) and in the melancholy closing scene between brother and sister, but everywhere else he goes seriously wrong.  He feels compelled to toss into the action the uncalled-for stuffed animals he unfortunately thinks are his trademark, a pigeon in Act 1 and a dead skunk in Act 3.  The gimmicks he lards the play with not only are unnecessary but destroy the sense of refinement that is Marivaux’s hallmark. 

While Blendick is allowed to play Hermocrate straight, Monette loads Lucy Peacock’s Léontine with so many idiosyncrasies that he pushes the character directly into the kind of farce Marivaux studiously avoided.  Rather than portraying her as an ascetic intellectual like her brother, Monette forces Peacock to play Léontine as a silly old biddy.  He makes her extremely nearsighted so that she can see only wearing thick glasses.  He frequently forgets this, however, in seeking to garner laughs by making her bump into people, trees and furniture even with glasses on.  By Act 3 he has so forgotten her nearsightedness, he has her distinguish miniature portraits while wearing her glasses.  He makes her sneeze at ever mention of the word “love” and emphasizes this by having her jingle a beaker of marbles with every sneeze (though she loses this trait, too, after Act 1). 

Although the siblings employ a gardener, Monette has Léontine enter in Act 2 carrying a load of cabbages, at which point the act becomes more about tricks one can do with cabbages than Marivaux’s dialogue.  The gardener dribbles one cabbage like a basketball and later stuffs two in his vest to shock Hermocrate.  For the servant Harlequin, Monette borrows an idea from his execrable “Merchant of Venice” of 2001 where he had Launcelot Gobbo converse with himself via a rag doll.  Here he has Harlequin relate a conversation by using a cabbage as a puppet to represent the person overheard.  Needless to say, none of this is in Marivaux.  Worse, the gimmicks, funny voices and funny poses are so distracting they obliterate the import to character and plot of Marivaux’s precise, elegant prose.

There are other problems.  Designer Michael Gianfrancesco has imagined a lovely set given an autumnal glow by Ereca Hassell’s lighting and created beautiful period costumes in a palette of ivories, silvers and yellows, but he errs in giving such richly wrought costumes to Hermocrate and Léontine.  These hardly reflect the unworldly, ascetic life the two are repeatedly said to lead.  Van Burek’s 2001 production more sensibly clad them in severe, almost monastic garb.  Visually this made their internal struggle in giving into passion both clearer and funnier. 

In a play that revolves around nuance, Monette has encouraged most of the cast to overact.  The worst offender is Lucy Peacock, whose constant mugging, fidgeting and awkward posturing do not make for a realistic biddy, much less a refined rationalist in or out of love.  Andy Velásquez tries much too hard as Harlequin, a role that should be as smooth and elegant as a china figurine.  Jeffrey Renn’s Damis the Gardener is characterized primarily by pointlessly making loud noises at every opportunity.  As Agis, David Snelgrove is far too bland and completely misses the humour of psychological readjustment when the “boy” he has just sworn eternal friendship to reveals himself to be a girl.  He similarly fails to react later on when he discovers his beloved is his sworn enemy. 

On the other hand, Claire Jullien gives a fine, solid performance and is the mainstay of the production.  Under a more sensitive director she could have more clearly distinguished the different approaches necessary to woo brother, sister and beloved.  Nevertheless, she provides the kind of multifaceted interpretation we long for in Agis and Léontine.  James Blendick plays his part with great seriousness and sensitivity thus making Hermocrate’s conversion to love all the more dramatic.  Brigit Wilson as Léonide’s servant Corinne is steady if unremarkable.

One leaves this production with a sense of irritation.  Van Burek’s 2001 production revealed this work for the delightful play it is.  By eliminating the gimmicks, treating the sister as seriously as the brother and taking a simple, straightforward approach to Marivaux’s elegant text, this production could easily, with the same cast, have been just as rewarding.  Sadly, Monette has thrown a dead skunk into Marivaux’s charming play in more ways than one.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Claire Jullien. ©2004 Stratford Festival.