Matthew Broderick is delightfully sleazy as Tartuffe at NYTW

 

Matthew Broderick’s wisely low-keyed performance in the title role and playwright Lucas Hnath’s très moderne translation make New York Theatre Workshop’s revival of Tartuffe seem like a new work rather than Molière’s 1664 satire of religious piety that we have seen for years.  It’s hilarious, and a perfect play to mirror the religious hypocrisy of our own time.

Under Sarah Benson’s direction Broderick avoids the temptation to exaggerate Tartuffe’s vileness, allowing the wittiness of the verses to shine.  When well-written plays go wrong it’s because the actors and director fail to follow a major performance rule: TRUST THE TEXT.  Luckily that’s just what this cast and director do.

Tartuffe-like characters flourish in all eras, a charlatan posing as a devoutly religious man who inspires blind acceptance from his followers.  In the play it’s fun to watch.  In our current day, though, it’s frightening what heights of power these blind followers will bestow on one person.  Our very democracy is at risk.

In the play, what’s at risk is the fortune of one wealthy French aristocrat, Orgon (David Cross), who we learn at the start has become so enamored of Tartuffe that he dismisses his family’s concerns and even plans to marry off his only daughter, Mariane (Emily Davis), to the sleazy swindler who, unbeknownst to him, has already tried to seduce his wife, Elmire (Amber Gray).  It’s delightful to watch Broderick ingratiate his way into the foolish Orgon’s household.  We experience Mariane’s horror when her father tells her, “It comforts me to know that a man of divinity will get to be the one who takes your virginity.”

He even looks slimy thanks to Enver Chakartash’s costumes, which are bright and lush for the other characters.  Tartuffe is dressed in a black frock coat and hat, with a wig of long gray hair. (Wig and hair design by Robert Pickens).  But to Orgon he is a spiritual man who should be rewarded and he signs over his entire fortune and estate to him.

The NYTW production is one of two revivals of Tartuffe presented Off-Broadway this fall.  André De Shields brought the self-righteous fraud to the House of the Redeemer, an Episcopal event site on the Upper East Side with seating for 100.  NYTW seats 199. 

Hnath was unaware that that production was in the works until this summer.  He had been thinking about writing a new play in Molière’s style when he decided to create a new version of the original French text using a 1930s English translation, working every day for nine months going line by line to understand the meaning and then devising rhymes, with plenty of profanity, to match.  

One character I would have liked to have seen played bigger was Dorine, the maid who does little work but has plenty to say about the family she serves.  As played by 64-year-old Lisa Kron, she’s slow moving, sitting around commenting on the goings on and doing little work.  I can’t help comparing her to the first Dorine I saw when Baltimore’s Center Stage presented the show in February 1976.  A just-getting-started Christine Baranski stole the show with her sassy, sharp-tongued, lively portrayal.  She became part of the repertory of actors at that exceptional regional theatre where her headshot hung on the wall of the bar/cafe.  That performance will always be Dorine for me.

Stephen Schwartz's 'The Baker's Wife' brings a little bit of French flavor to the East Village

 

The first time I heard of The Baker’s Wife was in 1993 when I bought “Patti LuPone Live.”  To set up a song she tells the audience, “There’s a musical theatre joke that if Hitler was alive today his punishment should be to send him out on the road with a musical in trouble.  We were that musical, The Baker’s Wife.”  Then she sang the lovely song “Meadowlark,” making me wonder why the show was so bad with such a pretty song, which she sang with full heart and obvious appreciation.

The next time I heard of The Baker’s Wife was in 2008 when I received a review copy of the CD “Patti LuPone at Les Mouches.”  It had been recorded in 1980 when LuPone had been performing 27 weeks  of midnight shows at the Greenwich Village nightclub.  After mentioning that her next song would be “Meadowlark,” someone in the audience voiced approval, to which she replied, “You’ve been here before.  Nobody know about that gobbler.”  Again I was curious about the musical and wondered if I’d ever get to see it.

I finally did, last night, thanks to Classic Stage Company, which has given this 1976 musical a shining and joyful production.  Stephen Schwartz’s songs, which are both funny and moving, are well presented by the excellent cast of 20, although I wish director Gordon Greenberg and book writer Joseph Stein had done some cutting.  This sweet little story, based on Marcel Pagnol’s 1938 film, set in a rural French village in Provence in 1935 would be better served as two hours with no intermission rather than its two and a half hours.  The second act dragged for me.

The story opens as folks gather in the village square in eager anticipation of the arrival of the new baker.  They have been without bread for three weeks since their baker got drunk, fell in a ditch, broke his neck and died.  For the French, this is a grande horreur — being without their fresh bread, not the death of the baker.  Denise (Judy Kuhn), wife of the café owner, describes life there in the opening song,

Ev’ry day as you do what you do ev’ry day/You see the same faces who will fill the cafe./And if some of these faces have new things to say/Nothing is really different.  

Kuhn, a multiple Tony, Olivier and Grammy Award nominee, is a winning commentator throughout.

When the baker, Aimable Castagnet  (Bill English last night filling in for Scott Bakula), arrives with his wife, Geneviève (Ariana DeBose), the villagers joyously surround them and comment among themselves on why such a beautiful young woman would marry such an old man.  Much is made throughout about the age difference and it certainly is a major plot element but I think it would have been more obvious with Bakula, who is 71, than English, who is 63 but with his boyish face could easily pass for a decade younger.  DeBose is a mature and sexy 34.  

Geneviève had been in love with a married man who refused to leave his wife for her.  Aimable was a devoted patron of the café where she was a waitress, every night sitting at her table and ordering veal au gratin because she had laughed the first time he ordered it.  It was the start of his devotion that he sings about after they are married, “I will try to make you happy.”  Even though it’s a rebound marriage for Geneviève, she seems genuinely fond of her husband and determined to be content with their marriage.  

That is until she meets Dominique (Kevin William Paul), the handsome young servant of the Marquis (Nathan Lee Graham).  He pursues her at every encounter and she tries to resist until, after singing “Meadowlark,” she gives in and they leave town.  The song is about a story Geneviève had loved as a child about a blind lark and an old king who takes her in and she sings for him with a “voice that could match the angels in its glory.”  One day the god of the sun sees the beautiful lark and grants her sight.  He encourages her to fly away with him, “come along,” but “the old king loved her so” that she wouldn’t leave him.  When the king comes down the next day, ”He found his meadowlark had died.  Every time I heard that part I cried,” Genevieve sings, and proclaims she won’t miss her chance.

“Oh, just when I thought my heart was finally numb, a beautiful young man appears before me, Singing ‘Come/ Oh, won’t you come?’”  And she does.

It’s a wonderful song but DeBose ruins it with wild flinging and waving of her arms throughout.  How could Greenberg have allowed that?  It’s annoying. 

Act Two finds the villagers once again longing for their bread because Aimable is so despondent he has stopped baking.  Trying to entice him back into his kitchen they dance and sing around the square in a couple of numbers that show off Stephanie Klemons’ choreography but that I would drop to move the show along.  I did love the scene in which Geneviève and Dominique dance a sensual pas de duex (in photo) as Aimable stands looking on; this is what he is imagining. 

Scenic designer Jason Sherwood uses the tiny performance space well, creating the atmosphere of a tiny French village with flowers climbing the walls at front and back, with three café tables at one end and the storefront of the BOULANGERIE (bakery) at the far end.

I won’t reveal the ending, which I loved.  The show is finishing up its run but you may be able to catch it later since I’m thinking this production is a testing of the waters for a possible Broadway transfer.