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by Molière, directed by Joël Beddows

Théâtre français de Toronto, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, Toronto

May 12-28, 2017

Dom Juan: “La constance n'est bonne que pour des ridicules”

Joël Beddows, the new Artistic Director of the Théâtre français de Toronto, makes his company debut directing Molière’s 1665 play Dom Juan ou le Festin du Pierre.  The TfT usually concludes its seasons with a comedy and that comedy is usually by Molière.  This season, however, even though the play is by Molière it is an anomaly among his works in rather definitely not being a comedy.  In 2006 Lorraine Pintal directed Dom Juan at the Stratford Festival and made the mistake of trying too hard to make the play funny.  Beddows understands the play much better and shows us the work for what it is – a provocative showcase for a character who flouts every law of common morality that is only a comedy in the supernatural sense in that he is punished for his crimes with eternal damnation.

Several of Molière’s greatest comedies come very close to being tragedies in disguise.  Without a deus ex machina Orgon and his family would be ruined at the end of Tartuffe (1664).  Alceste, the title character of Le Misanthrope (1666), exiles himself from a society he feels is too corrupt.  Harpagon, the title character of L’Avare (1668), is left in total isolation after having alienated himself from everyone around him.  Dom Juan fits in with this series since the central character views society as corrupt but, unlike Alceste, plans to use its corruption to his own advantage.  In so doing, Dom Juan becomes by Act 5 a hypocrite like Tartuffe, that being in his view the most sinful of all forms of sinfulness.  Like Harpagon, Dom Juan alienates all around him and experiences the ultimate form of isolation and exile by being dragged directly to Hell. 

The problem with the figure of Don Juan in literature and opera is that his rebellion against the fundamental laws of society can also be seen as heroic.  Don Juan, like the other Renaissance rebel Dr. Faustus, can be seen as an early form of Nietzsche’s Superman who rejects the herd mentality of the world around him in order to develop a superior mode of being.  Molière approach is ambiguous with his Dom Juan defiant to the end, an approach which is one of the reasons why the play was banned after 15 performances and not published in an uncensored form in France until 1813.

Joël Beddows’ approach to the play is to emphasize its theatrical nature in general and its theme of role-playing in particular.  To do this has had Melanie McNeill design a raised wooden stage in the playing area of the Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs with two impromptu dressing rooms on either side of it.  The stage is missing boards here and there are some are too long or too short to suggest hasty or imperfect construction.  If “All the world’s a stage” as Jacques says in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (c. 1599), then McNeill’s depiction of it is not very positive.  Hanging aslant along the back wall is a worn and tattered red velvet curtain as if this theatrum mundi has undergone some heavy wear and tear since it was created. 

Nina Okens’s costumes are in modern dress for Dom Juan and his servant Sganarelle, who wears a T-shirt with the ironic words “Best Man” blazoned across it, jeans, sneakers and a fanny pack.  Dom Juan is altogether more elegant in a blousy white shirt, black pants and boots.  Done Elvire, the distraught woman Dom Juan abandoned, is clad in a worn wedding gown and the various peasants – Charlotte, Gusman and Pierrot – are dressed in work clothes that could belong to any period from the late 19th-century on.  The play’s two main representatives of authority, Done Elvire’s brother Dom Luis, and Dom Juan’s father, Dom Alonse, are both dressed in the style of Molière’s time in justacorps coats, breeches, hose and shoes with polony heels. 

This costuming implies that the morality Dom Luis and Dom Alonse represent is outmoded in comparison with the up-to-date immorality of Dom Juan.  The question, however, is why Sganarelle, who also represents a traditional moral world view is dressed in contemporary garb like Dom Juan.  As depicted by Beddows, Sganarelle is not only devoted to his master as a faithful servant but may actually be in love with him.  This very love is what makes Sganarelle try so hard to dissuade Dom Juan from further sin and to encourage him to repent.  Does this love so taint him as to make him a corrupt contemporary or should Sganarelle really be identified more with upholders of traditional virtue?

Beddows emphasizes the theme of role-playing by staging the play with only six actors.  Pierre Simpson as Dom Juan and Marcelo Arroyo as Sganarelle play only those single roles, but the rest of the cast play two or three roles each and move to the impromptu dressing rooms to change their costumes in view of the audience.  The irony is that Dom Juan and Sganarelle are opposites.  Sganarelle has only one identity, that of loyal servant, while Dom Juan changes his façade to appeal to whomever he wants to seduce.

Pierre Simpson has delighted TfT audiences over the years with his perfect portrayal of the hapless schmuck François Pignon in three modern comedies by Francis Veber – Le Dîner des cons in 2009, L’Emmerdeur in 2012 and Le Placard in 2016.  Fans of Simpson will be pleased to see that he is equally expert at portraying such a completely different character as the unapologetic moral reprobate Dom Juan.  Whereas Simpson as Pignon was awkward in word and deed, his Dom Juan is suave and graceful in both.  He speaks the complex prose in which Dom Juan is written with masterful clarity to the point that he makes Molière’s version of the famous character as much a free-thinking philosopher, who is an atheist and materialist, as much as a moral libertine. 

Contrasted with Simpson’s Dom Juan is the wonderful Sganarelle of Marcelo Arroyo.  Arroyo’s Sganarelle is a man of traditional faith and values who urgently pleads with his licentious, intellectual master to repent and reform because in Sganarelle’s world view Dom Juan’s actions will lead only to eternal damnation.  A question always connected with Dom Juan’s servant is why he remains with a master who does not pay him and only gets him into trouble.  Beddows answer is

that Sganarelle is as much in love with his master as are the countless women he seduces.  Whenever Dom Juan wants to calm Sganarelle or have him him agree with some scheme, Beddows has Dom Juan caress Sganarelle as if affirming his love for the poor fellow, who is fool enough to believe that Dom Juan is even capable of the emotion.  Arroyo’s gives a deeply sympathetic portrayal of Sganarelle and when he cries out at the end “Mes gages!  mes gages!” it comes across as tragic, not comic, because with his master’s doom Sganarelle has lost the person her cared for above all others. 

The other four actors impress with how distinct they keep the many characters they play.  As the peasants Charlotte and Pierrot, Sophie Goulet and Nicolas Van Burek are the only two truly comic figures in the play.  Speaking in a nearly impenetrable Parisian patois, the two represent an example of ordinary, earthly love that contrasts with the high-flown phrases Dom Juan uses to seduce.  The fact that Dom Juan can so easily turn Charlotte’s head is as much a comment on her gullibility as his art of persuasion.  When Goulet and Van Burek appear next they are totally different.  Van Burek is convincing in the role of the noble Dom Luis, who refuses to take revenge on Dom Juan after Dom Juan saves his life.  Goulet completely transforms herself into Madame (originally Monsieur) Dimanche, a banker asking Dom Juan to pay his debts.

The imposing Christian Laurin plays a beggar whom Dom Juan spurns, Dom Alonse, Dom Juan’s father, and the statue of the Commandeur, Done Elvire’s father whom Dom Juan killed.  Laurin makes the beggar completely unlike the father and the Commandeur, but intentionally brings out the similarities of the latter two.  This makes the ending all the more forceful since it seems as if Dom Juan’s is damned by his own father.

Though Lina Blais plays the simple-minded peasant Mathurine for comedy, her performance as Done Elvire is quite remarkable.  Blais’s Elvire is not the semi-comic figure of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787) who mercilessly hounds the miscreant hoping he will honour his pledge to marry her.  Instead, Blais shows us a tragic character whose sense of self-worth has been totally destroyed by Dom Juan’s casual cruelty.  When we see her again in Act 4, she has reconciled herself to his betrayal and wishes only that he save himself from eternal punishment.  Blais makes Done Elvire look as if she, too, is at the end of her life, worn down by suffering and scorned love, speaking her final words as if making a a great effort with the little life she has left.

Throughout the action Beddows has used three rectangular cuboids with only two solid faces to represent everything from columns, display cases, underbrush or tables.  To represent Dom Juan’s demise, Beddows has three actors surround Dom Juan with the three upright frames and crush him into the small triangular space inside, as if his past itself, as represented by the actors, were crushing him.  It is a fittingly inventive conclusion to a production fully aware that Molière’s Dom Juan fundamentally is not a comedy but rather a serious portrait of why the idea of living a life without consequences is both so attractive and so false.  Take advantage of the chance to see one of Molière’s less performed works in this fine production. 

In French (with English surtitles): May 10-28, 2017 

Surtitled performances Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Pierre Simpson as Dom Juan and Marcelo Arroyo as Sganarelle; Lina Blais as Mathurine, Pierre Simpson as Dom Juan and Sophie Goulet as Charlotte; Marcelo Arroyo as Sganarelle and Pierre Simpson as Dom Juan. ©2017 Marc LeMyre.

For tickets, visit www.theatrefrancais.com.