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by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Carl and Ellendea Proffer, directed by László Marton

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

August 7-September 21, 2012

Orgon: “Offenser de la sorte une sainte personne!” (Tartuffe, Act III, Scene 7)

After exploring the plays of Anton Chekhov so thoroughly, it is encouraging to see the company begin to tackle the works of other Russian playwrights seldom staged in Canada.  Soulpepper began this investigation with Turgenev’s A Month in the Country in 2010 directed by László Marton.  Now Marton and the company have moved into the early 20th century with Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Royal Comedians (1936), better known as A Cabal of Hypocrites (Кабала святош) or simply as Molière after the central character.  While we applaud Soulpepper’s willingness to stage lesser-known classics, the present production of The Royal Comedians will not win many converts to Bulgakov’s cause.

Bulgakov (1891-1940) is most famous for his novel The Master and Margarita, not published until 26 years after his death, but he also wrote many plays for the Moscow Art Theatre.  Bulgakov had early success but had constant run-ins with the capricious Soviet censors.  His first novel White Guard (1925) was suppressed because it dealt with the Civil War, yet his play The Last Days of the Turbins (1926) based on the novel became a huge success and won Stalin’s favour.  After his next plays were banned, Bulgakov took on the topic of political censorship itself in The Royal Comedians (written in 1929 but not staged until 1936), using the relation between Molière and his patron Louis XIV as a parallel to his own relation to Stalin, who often protected him.  Finally, by 1929 all of Bulgakov’s work was officially banned.  Only Bulgakov’s direct plea to Stalin allowed him to keep working at the theatre.  

In the play Molière (Diego Matamoros) is at the height of his fame, but although he enjoys the favour of Louis XIV (Gregory Prest), groups have formed in the court that seek his downfall.  The most powerful group, the parti des Dévots, is headed by the archbishop of Paris, the Marquis de Charron (Michael Hanrahan), who joins forces with the musketeer, the Marquis d’Orsini (Stuart Hughes), who felt Molière’s satire was undermining social values.                  

For this group Molière’s L’École des femmes (1662) that suggested that women should be educated caused major controversy.  The last straw for this cabal was Molière’s Le Tartuffe, ou L’Imposteur (1664), which took direct aim at religious hypocrisy.  The cabal, managed to have it banned, but the play Molière wrote to replace it, Dom Juan was deemed just as bad or even worse because it seemed to glorify atheism. 

In Bulgakov, the Marquis de Charron, like the head of the secret police, is looking for any irregularity in Molière’s life that he can use against him.  He finds it when Molière marries the young actress Armande Béjart (Sarah Koehn), the sister of his longtime mistress and confidante Madeleine Béjart (Raquel Duffy).  In the play Madeleine suffers from the terrible secret that Armande is not her sister but actually her own daughter by Molière.  While history has determined that Molière was not Armande’s father, Bulgakov uses the legend to give the Marquis grounds to have the king withdraw his support for Molière and his troupe.  Historically, this, too, did not occur but Bulgakov is more interested in good theatre rather than accurate history.

The difficulty of Marton’s production is that it is not very compelling.  One reason for this is Soulpepper’s use of recent graduates of its Academy to fill out the cast.  This makes the level of acting extremely uneven.  Someone like Sarah Koehn in a major role is simply not up to it in terms of projection, diction and range of expression.  This is true of so many of the graduates that one wonders about the efficacy of their training.  Two notable exceptions are Paolo Santalucia, who plays the complex Zacharie Moirron, an actor who is one of Molière’s discoveries but who falls in love with Armande.  A second is Daniel Williston as the Cobbler, who functions as the king’s jester and wry commentator on life at court.

Another factor is the aggressively unattractive set design of Lorenzo Savoini.  He gives us a long hall in forced perspective with ten doors on either side.  This works well enough for scenes set in the cabal’s underground meeting place, inside a cathedral or backstage at the theatre, the grimy walls hardly suit the reception room of Louis XIV, no matter how Kevin Lamotte lights it, nor the sets for any of Molière’s plays.  More controversial is Victoria Wallace’s costume design.  Excerpts of Molière’s works played onstage use 17th-century costume, but the actors backstage dress in clothes of the 1930s as do the two marquises and the king.  Obviously, the mixing of styles from the 1660s and 1930s is meant to keep the parallel between Molière and Bulgakov constantly before our minds.  The problem is that the focus on the 17th century is meant to function as a mask for events in the 20th.  The tension between mask and face is destroyed if you reveal so overtly what it is meant to hide.  Connected to this is Marton’s request to have sound designer Richard Feren underscore the frightening parts of the acting with cheap movie fright music, as if we were too dull to understand the action without it. 

Prest gives Louis XIV the interesting trait of seeming to toy with Molière even as he is praising him.  Hanrahan and Hughes play the two marquises as straight villains, Hanrahan increasing the Archbishop’s malign nature through his completely calm behaviour.  Michael Simpson as Molière’s theatre manager and William Webster as a useless hanger-on do good work in lightening the mood and in directing our sympathy toward Molière.  In general, though, Matamoros seems to be struggling to hold play together while giving yet another fine portrait of a good man falling into inexorable decline. 

It says something about the show that the two best scenes are the long extracts from Molière’s plays L’École des femmes and Tartuffe in Richard Wilbur’s translations.  The table scene from Tartuffe with Duffy as Elmire, Simpson as Orgon and Matamoros as Tartuffe is so good Soulpepper should really think of reviving the play for Matamoros.  Of the non-Molière scenes the best is the Archbishop’s malevolent hearing of Madeleine’s confession –she earnestly trying to save her soul, he merely prying for information to condemn her former lover. 

Bulgakov’s play has received praise in numerous productions around the world.  Here we need to have a better design, a more consistent acting company and a director who can better negotiate the play’s constant shifting of tone between comedy and tragedy.  Even if this particular production does not work as well as it should, I hope Soulpepper continues its exploration of Russian drama beyond Chekhov to help us gain a better understanding of both drama and history. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: William Webster and Diego Matamoros. ©2012 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit http://www.soulpepper.ca.