THEATER : ‘Miser’ Is Updated but Still Keys on Obsession : Director Says Moliere Work Gives Her a Chance to Take On Contemporary Society’s Problems

Was Moliere a scathing moralist who held up a mirror to the educated 17th-Century burghers of Paris or a sharp-tongued dramatist bent on entertaining his audience?

Both, of course. But it depends on your point of view whether one or the other of his aspects is emphasized.

Jerome Guardino, who is starring in the title role of Moliere’s “The Miser”--the season opener at the Gem Theatre here--calls the French playwright “the greatest social commentator of his time.”

Guardino argues that dark themes underlie Moliere’s comic intentions. And, he says, this Grove Shakespeare Festival production of Moliere’s 1668 satire on obsessive greed has been set in the roaring ‘20s with Betty Boop-ish flappers and beanie-wearing preppies to bring its implications closer to home.

On the other hand, Louis Jouvet, whom some critics consider the greatest Moliere actor of the 20th Century, gave a famous lecture in 1937 that tried to demolish what he termed “the myth of Moliere the moralist and philosopher.” Jouvet preferred to see the great French playwright’s value purely in theatrical terms.

Still earlier, in 1877, the English novelist and poet George Meredith gave an even more famous lecture, “On the Idea of Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit,” which looked back on Moliere as the “poet” of the Parisian bourgeoisie.

This segment of society was “sufficiently quick-witted and enlightened by education to welcome (Moliere’s) great works,” Meredith wrote in a paean to the middle class. “Cultivated men and women, who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute and balanced observers. Moliere is their poet.”

While it is true that many, though not all, of Moliere’s comedies packed the seats at Richelieu’s Palais-Royal theater, Meredith’s accolade seems both rose-tinted and skewed. The middle class was among Moliere’s favorite targets. He lacerated its narrow-minded conventions, its religious zealotry and its culture-mongering affectations. And, not surprisingly, he was the subject of bitter attacks by those he satirized.

When Moliere died in 1673 shortly after giving his fourth performance in the title role of “The Imaginary Invalid”--the playwright was an actor as well--no priest would attend him. Even the doctors who were summoned came reluctantly to his bedside because he had so thoroughly ridiculed their profession.

Moliere himself has left no doubt about what he thought he was doing through his satires. In an appeal to Louis XIV against the banning of “Tartuffe,” one of his greatest works, he wrote that “the duty of comedy is to correct men by entertaining them.”

Meanwhile, nothing could appeal more to Deborah LaVine, who has staged “The Miser” in her directorial debut at the Gem. She says the idea of blending instruction and pleasure dovetails precisely with her intent to dramatize contemporary social problems.

“In all frankness, the theater chose the piece,” LaVine says. “But I’m delighted to be doing it because it treats so many issues: business corruption, the unpredictability of banks, greed, the haves and the have-nots. But what is really essential is that this is a play about obsession. It extends to everybody, not just the miser.”

Indeed, the miser Harpagon is obsessed with the gold coins buried in his garden. Elise, his daughter, is obsessed with Valere, his fawning, newly hired major domo. Valere is obsessed with discovering his true identity. Cleante, Elise’s brother, is obsessed with clothes and a young woman who has been pledged to the miser by Frosine, a street-wise matchmaker who is also obsessed with money.

“Originally I wanted to put the play in the Depression,” LaVine says. “But then I thought that would be foolish because it would make the miser look wise for not putting his money in the banks. So I pulled it back further to the ‘20s, which I think works better.

“There were lots of elements of the ‘20s that I could pick out of the text,” she adds. “The consumerism was lush. There was a giddiness and frivolity in the air. There was a certain formality in the family structure that we don’t have now. The language of the Jazz Age also seemed more appropriate. I thought it would be nice to juxtapose all that against the meager, dark paranoia of the miser.”

LaVine, a Cleveland native who lives in Santa Monica and has directed more than 100 Equity Waiver shows in the Los Angeles areas, didn’t stop there. She also went for colorblind casting and imposed a new character on the play, a tattered-looking beggar who hovers in the garden at the fringe of the action.

“I use him sparingly,” she says, “but I hope at the right moments. He is mute. He has no lines.”

The beggar apparently is intended as an illustration of the problems of the homeless, an issue that interests LaVine, and as a method of underscoring the miser’s lack of generosity.

Would Moliere have approved?

“I think he would love the notion of us updating the play,” LaVine maintains, “and of bringing in images that help support his point of view. He was a man of the theater, and he would have wanted us to grow with his text.”