✭✭✭✭✩
<b>by Molière, translated by Tony Harrison,
directed by Johanna Schall
the red light district, Drake Hotel Underground, Toronto
April 3-24, 2009</b><b>
</b>
The red light district gives Molière’s classic comedy <i>The Misanthrope</i> (1666) an exciting new production in the Underground of the chichi Drake Hotel. It’s an entirely appropriate setting for a play that satirizes the tyranny and vapidity of fashion where looks, apparel and connections carry more weight than honesty or truth. Johanna Schall, who happens to be Bertolt Brecht’s granddaughter, directs a highly talented young cast in an imaginative production filled with vigour and imagination.
While <i>The Misanthrope</i> may be one of Molière greatest plays it is also one of the most difficult to pull off. One reason is that there is virtually no plot. Instead, Molière gives us an escalating series of satirical portraits of characters who publicly humiliate each other in a witty but vicious game of social one-upmanship. Then, at the centre is Alceste (Ted Witzel), one of Molière’s most ambiguous creations. His rage against the flaws of society are both naive and idealistic and are undercut by his love for Célimène (Eve Wylden), the worst coquette in his circle. To obviate both difficulties, Schall gives the production a buoyant carnivalesque atmosphere. The costumes designed by Schall’s sister Jenny brilliantly blend elements the 17th-century dress with the in-couture of present-day teens. Made-up with white-painted faces and red Kewpie-doll lips the actors look both like Molière’s contemporaries and modern Cirque du Soleil clowns. In the acting space consisting solely of the aisles between and around the four blocks of seats, Schall encourages the actors to interact with the audience so that, as in clowning, the performances are both highly stylized and immediate.
Another clever twist is to change the sex of two characters--Eliante (Simon Rainville) from woman to man and Acaste (Kat Letwin) from man to woman. Since Eliante is Alceste’s second choice after Célimène this makes this already ambiguous character also bisexual, while Célimène herself is now desired by both a marquis and a marquise. This raises the sexual tension considerably especially when we know that the normally stodgy “raisonneur” figure Philinte (Reid Linforth) is also in love with now-male Eliante.
It helps that the entire cast speak Tony Harrison’s clever up-to-date translation in rhyming couplets with such clarity and understanding. This turns the battles of wit and humiliation into real, gasp-inducing struggles for power. Better than any cast of veteran actors I’ve seen, this youthful cast brings out the terrible truth that vicious words may mean nothing in themselves but still can scar both the mockers and those they mock.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2009-04-05.
Photo: Ted Witzel.
<b>2009-04-05</b>
<b>The Misanthrope</b>