Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✭✩
by Molière, translated by Richard Wilbur,
directed by David Grindley
Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford
August 12-October 29, 2011
The Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s new production of Molière’s The Misanthrope is a breath of fresh air after a season of misguided, over-produced Shakespeare on the Festival Theatre stage this year. As directed by David Grindley, the productions emphasizes acting and language as opposed to the special effects, assorted gimmicks and impositions of bizarre concepts that have marred the Festival’s productions of Shakespeare this year and so often in the past decade. The positive result is the wonderful experience of an audience closely paying attention, hanging on every word, and delighting in the nuances of Molière’s play and the wit of Richard Wilbur’s classic translation.
The misanthrope of the title is Alceste, whose belief in always telling the truth, clashes with the world of flattery and insincerity he lives in. All that prevents him from abandoning mankind to live on some desert island his love for Célimène, a woman, who to his annoyance loves to keep as many male admirers about her as possible. Alceste’s plain speaking involves him in one lawsuit after another while Célimène’s flirtations raise the ire of the prudish Arsinoé, who plots Célimène’s downfall.
In John Lee Beatty’s set design the original shape of the Festival stage is exposed for the first time this year instead of being covered over in all sorts of ways to make the area larger and more rectangular. Seeing the shape as Tanya Moiseiwitsch conceived it reminds one how brilliant he design is and how grotesque the various floor overlays have been that have concealed it. If Beatty’s design errs it is in providing side doors in Directoire style, more than a century beyond the Louis XIV style suitable for a play written and set in 1666. Also the chair seat-sized floral pattern of the gilded balustrade for his stairway that arches up and over the central entrance is too large in scale for the rest of the stage design and not in keeping with period design for a private home.
Robin Fraser Paye’s pastel costumes are beautifully in keeping with the period except for the glitter on the jabots of Clitandre and Acaste. He has created such a gorgeous peach-coloured gown for Célimène, it’s a pity he felt the need to have her change out of it for a less interesting gown for the final act, especially when the action does not require it.
In 1981, the last time the Festival stage The Misanthrope, Brain Bedford played Alceste directed by Jean Gascon. Bedford was to have directed this production, but the success of his The Importance of Being Earnest in New York caused him to pass the reins to David Grindley. Bedford also was to have played the role of the foppish poet Oronte and Tim MacDonald the role of Acaste, but illness forced Bedford, and seemingly MacDonald also, to drop out of their roles.
As originally conceived, Bedford must have recognized Ben Carlson, whom he directed in Ernest, as his successor in the title role. This is exactly what he proves to be. Carlson in well on the way to becoming one of Canada’s greatest actors. He mastered the enormously complex prose of George Bernard Shaw in is many seasons at the Shaw Festival. He has shown he can speak Shakespearean verse with a clarity none of his contemporaries can match. And now, he proves that he make that highly artificial form of rhyming couplets sound perfectly natural as well as clear. Bedford, as everyone knows, has always had a bag of stage tricks that audiences have grown to love. Carlson does not and his performance is all the stronger for it. Besides that, he is willing to invest Alceste with real emotion that gives his character greater depth. Unlike Bedford who always kept an emotional distance, Carlson weeps more than once at the prospect of ever losing Célimène with the result that Molière’s satirical comedy reveals itself more clearly as the personal tragedy of the main character. It is a brilliant performance.
As Célimène, Sara Topham is appropriately vivacious. Her need constantly to be admired by many men may be a fault, but, unlike in some productions, she makes clear that Célimène really does love Alceste. The two are alike in that society provides them with an unending material for satirical portraits, but while society disgust Alceste, Célimène revels in it. We side with Célimène in regarding the various tests Alceste puts her to as unfair.
Juan Chioran is excellent as Philinte, Alceste’s best friend and the raisonneur of the play. He shows a proficiency with rhymed couplets on par with Carlson and lends verve to a character who often can seem pedantic. Kelli Fox is outstanding as Arsinoé. She, too, is admirably adept at speaking couplets and at pointed emphasis with lines. She is delightfully malevolent in couching her criticism of Célimène’s supposed immorality in the politest terms.
Steve Ross and Trent Pardy are well paired as Célimène’s admirers, Clitandre and Acaste, who seek Célimène’s attentions primarily to stroke their own vanity. As Célimène’s third would-be beau, Oronte, Peter Hutt can’t really be said to fill Brian Bedford’s shoes. His harsh, naturally cynical tone prevents his buffoonery from being as comic as it should be. Another disappointment is Martha Farrell as Éliante, Célimène’s modest, truth-speaking cousin, whom Philinte thinks would be a better match for Alceste. Farrell speaks at a lower volume level than the others and shows much less proficiency in speaking rhymed couplet or in clarity of diction. Brian Tree is hilarious in his cameo appearance as Alceste’s bumbling valet.
To see how beautifully Moiseiwitsch’s stage works for classical theatre and to hear how much an audience can be enthralled by Molière’s language itself mades one wonder why the Stratford Shakespeare Festival cannot present its namesake playwright in the same way. Why is there so much effort placed in directorial smoke and mirrors that do nothing but distract attention from Shakespeare’s language and characters rather than enlightening them? If you want to see an example that so far is as close as you can get to what Stratford was like in its heyday in the 1970s and early ‘80s, then be sure to see this Misanthrope and Canada’s newest master of the art of classical acting, Ben Carlson.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Sara Topham and Ben Carlson. ©2011 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.
2011-08-13
The Misanthrope