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by Molière, translated by Adrienne Clarkson and John Van Burek, directed by John Van Burek

Pleiades Theatre and the National Arts Centre,

The Theatre Centre, Toronto

November 4, 2007

Dying to Be Sick is a translation by John Van Burek and former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson of Molière’s final comedy Le malade imaginaire (1673), best known in English as The Imaginary Invalid.  It is a fine, playful translation that retains Molière’s wit and a delightful flavour of the original French.  It is all the more surprising, therefore, that Clarkson and Van Burek would place this, the first Canadian translation of the play, into the hands of a director with so little feel for the text. 

Argan (Hardee T. Lineham), a rich, inveterate hypochondriac, wants to marry off his daughter Angélique (Stéphanie Broschart) to a doctor against her will so that he will always have someone to look after him for free.  Meanwhile Béline (Nikki Pascetta), Argan’s second wife, plots to get hold of his money while Argan’s wily maid Toinette (Michelle Polak) plots to have Angélique marry the man she really loves.  Argan is one of Molière’s most complex characters, a tyrant over his children whose unshakable faith in science paradoxically puts him in a masochistic relationship with his doctors.  He can’t conceive of life as health and independence for himself or anyone else.  An insightful director would try to find the root cause of Argan’s need for constant, humiliating care.

Brendan Healy is not that director.  In fact, he ruins the plays in three ways.  First, he succumbs to the common error that noise equals fun and stages the action as a continuous high volume shouting match.  Without modulation there is no differentiation of mood, tone or nuance.  Only in Argan’s scenes with his little daughter Louison (Samantha Somer Wilson) or with his brother Béralde (Victor Ertmanis), the raisonneur figure, does the volume level drop, but even these scenes are taken too quickly to sink in.  Second, Healy fails to differentiate the characters.  He tries to make Angélique an airhead and has her give a false reaction to Argan’s supposed death both of which contradict the sense of the text.  Toinette is supposed to be the smartest person in the play after Béralde, but Healy gives Polak a “funny” voice and makes her foolish.  Thus, there is no tension between the characters.  We never side with the young lovers or feel any real danger from an Argan, who only seems to bluster.  Third, Healy gives the play a new ending based on an historical incident that however makes nonsense of Argan’s hypochondria and of the mental cure the others have just given him.

Dana Osborne’s costumes combining elements of the 17th century with the 20th are wittier than Healy’s direction and tell us more about the characters than anything Healy does.  Her fantastic costume for Alex Poch-Goldin as Argan’s chief physician Purgon gives him a long cape lined with skulls and skeleton-patterned  gloves.  This co-production between Pleiades Theatre and the National Arts Centre has so much going for it--a spiffy new translation, a top-notch cast and clever design--that it’s a real shame insensitive direction should undermine it all.            

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-10-22.

Photo: Michelle Polak and Hardee T. Lineham. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.