Tartuffe by Moliere, March 14, 1997

Tartuffe by Moliere.

By La Poule Terrible 

Napier Street Theatre until March 30, 1997

Reviewed by Kate Herbert around March 14, 1997

Censorship was alive and well during the period of Moliere's Comedie Francaise. His play, Tartuffe, was banned as blasphemous on its first run. Moliere was a cruel social satirist of 18th century French aristocracy and was, in turn, hounded by the victims of his barbs.

He would probably have been burned as a heretic a few centuries earlier because it is the grasping, self-serving clergy who are the butt of his wit in Tartuffe, a play in the style of the later Commedia dell'Arte after it had ditched its masks and started writing down its scripts.

La Poule Terrible (Why name a company "The Terrible Chicken"?) have staged the play in its first production here since Jean Pierre Mignon's halcyon Anthill days in the very same theatre. This production adheres to the comic genre, using broad comic characterisation, colourful costuming, white-face with Cupid's bow lips.

Moliere originally played Tartuffe (here played by Lawrence Mooney); he wrote for himself plum roles that directly addressed the audience to heighten his acerbic attacks on their hypocrisy.

The indigent Tartuffe has been taken in by a gullible Orgon (Greg Parker) who is, in turn, taken in by the masterly masquerade of the duplicitous apparently pious cleric. He offers Tartuffe his daughter's hand and disbelieves the outraged family's accusations that Taretuffe is seducing the mistress of the house. (Christine Davey)

 Although the performers' skill levels vary, there are some very funny moments in both verbal witticisms and sight gags. Davey is a class act as the gracious, demure and finally vengeful wife, Elmire. With Parker, she lets fly with some classic commedia slapstick and impeccable timing in the much loved, under-the-table seduction scene.

Alice Bishop directs the whole production very neatly – perhaps a little too neatly. It lacks the inspired lunacy of the natural clown and often feels mechanical in it comic business, telegraphs its gags or concentrates too much on words instead of action.

However it is a valiant effort at a difficult play.

KATE HERBERT