Robert Jago, Kate Mulvany, Helen Dallimore, Charlie Garber, Geraldine Hakewill and Jennifer Hagan. Image by Lisa Tomasetti.
Classical rhyming couplets reforged into a profane Aussie vernacular could be a disaster, but translator Justin Fleming has worked a wonder with Moliere’s Tartuffe: The Hypocrite.
This biting shocker of the ancien regime, banned after a first showing at Versailles in 1664, has lost none of its flamboyant teethmarks on the rump of religious hypocrisy.
Tartuffe is a sham cleric, mouthing religious pieties while chasing the fortunes and the wife of his besotted host. Much as they try, Orgon’s eccentric family cannot convince him of Tartuffe’s duplicity. Ruin threatens when Tartuffe turns nasty after the gullible Orgon has signed over his whole estate and even promised his daughter.
After Barry Kosky’s carnival-style version for the STC in 1997 (translated by Christopher Hampton), Peter Evans for Bell Shakespeare has set his Tartuffe somewhere between an affluent Sydney modernity and a household of ancient privilege.
The vast ugly walls of Anna Cordingley’s set are oddly stripped back (presumably a house in moral renovation), while this clutter of concepts is also embodied in the mess of heavy furniture onstage. But it’s constantly in use as hiding places from which to observe life’s deceits.
Cordingley’s costumes are more successful, quoting a mad confusion of periods but each colourfully affirming individual character. Indeed, most magical in this production is the heightened but uniform theatricality of most of the cast. While some moments are conspicuously flat or the buffoonery just too silly, and the production begins underpowered, this ensemble brings authentic joy and attack to Moliere’s expert plotting and the complexity of his high satire. Like Fleming, they respect the words and the reward is beguiling performances.
Leon Ford is dour cool playing Tartuffe’s duplicities (with just the evil twinkle of a James Cagney) while Sean O’Shea is true as the naïve, piously striving Orgon. Helen Dallimore is hilarious as his wife, forced to submit to Tartuffe’s sleaze so as to reveal the hypocrisy of his fundamentalism.
Kate Mulvany is dynamite as the sassy servant, Dorine; Tom Hobbs and Geraldine Hakewill bring real laughter to the clichés of young lovers; and Charlie Garber delights as Orgon’s ineffectual son.
The sharp eye of Evans and his cast for truth and good comedy overrides all other stumbles.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Tartuffe: The Hypocrite
Bell Shakespeare Company
By Molière
A new version by Justin Fleming
Director: Peter Evans
Designer: Anna Cordingley
Design Associate: Kate Aubrey
Lighting Designer: Paul Jackson
Composer: Kelly Ryall
Movement Director: Scott Witt
Assistant Director: Susanna Dowling
Cast: Leon Ford, Sean O’Shea, Helen Dallimore, Geraldine Hakewill, Kate Mulvany, Charlie Garber, Tom Hobbs, Jennifer Hagan, Robert Jago, Russell Smith, Scott Witt.
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point
www.bellshakespeare.com.au
26 July – 23 August
