Moliere Gets Hollywood Treatment

Poor Moliere. Control freak that he reputedly was, he can’t control his 20th-Century translators.

Nor the translators who go that extra mile and adapt.

Until recently, the old man has been lucky, at least in English. His 17th-Century French farces and comedies have thrived in Richard Wilbur’s brilliant, elastic, fluid verse translations. It’s been said that Wilbur’s versions amount to some of the finest playwriting in decades.

But surely, slowly, like a nasty glacier, newer versions are pushing aside Moliere-Wilbur. A 1989 version by British playwright Neil Bartlett, written for the La Jolla Playhouse and Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, also is starting to be embraced in colleges. Judging by the staging at Concordia University’s Studio Theatre, it’s not a good sign.

Hold, for the moment, any judgment of the student cast, under Peter Senkbeil’s direction. The real issue is how Bartlett has taken over this masterpiece with a vengeance and has tried to mold it into a biting comedy about Hollywood and the last sincere man in town.

To understand how ludicrous it is to move “The Misanthrope” from the mid-17th-Century French court to ‘90s Hollywood, you have to know something about Moliere’s hero, Alceste (played here by Brian C. Inouye).

In the play, he has two basic concerns: to finally win the love of the reluctant and self-obsessed Celimene (Kris Willson), and to state his case in a libel suit.

Moliere allows Alceste to declare himself in the first scene with his one true pal, Philinte (Chris Tornow): “I want to be a man; a man who always tries / To speak straight from the heart, where his true feeling lies.”

Even given the number of real artists, from Welles to Faulkner, who tried Hollywood, a genuinely honest sort like Alceste--that rare non-caricature in Moliere’s theater--wouldn’t venture to The Industry.

Bartlett betrays his British origins in more than one way, and the first is to think that the ideal contemporary American match for European monarchal society is movie-making society. A keener observer of America would know that the closer match lies 3,000 miles east, in the power circles of Washington politics or the New York art and theater worlds, where idealists are still drawn.

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The loudest clue to how wrong this transposition really is comes when Oronte (Dan Morton), forever currying favor, tries to impress Alceste with . . . a sonnet.

This is very funny in the original, but jarringly out of place in Bartlett’s world. (The only thing that makes it funny here is Morton’s drippingly arch reading, the show’s best comic turn.)

More troublesome, though, is Bartlett’s ham-fisted melding of 17th- and 20th-Century idioms--a trick that works much better in Tim Mueller’s post-modern set design, humorously mixing faux-Roman columns and statuary with the high-tech industrial look.

We know we’re in trouble when one of the first statements from Alceste is “It’s not my party; but I’ll cry if I want to.” Elsewhere, word choices are uncomfortably stuck halfway across the Atlantic and time periods: “My taste’s catholic.” “ . . . the fruits of moral laxity.” “She’s absolutely beige.” “We discussed, at lunch, as these days one tends to / Popular morality.”

Sometimes, Bartlett tries to be British and Californian in the same breath, as when Alceste asks Oronte “Being so rich, how dare you pretend / You have no extra ‘bucks’ at all to spend?”

The words just hang in mid-air, a contorted version of what was originally both fleecy and fiery writing that few if any actors could possibly contend with.

In other words, a very, very tough college assignment. Still, even allowing for the impossibly uphill mountain they have to climb, this young cast isn’t ready to speak classical theater in public. (A better bet would have been to assign this as a class workshop.)

Except for Morton, the students sound unprepared both for Bartlett’s pointless experiment and Moliere’s verse and social satire. They are simply undertrained for Moliere’s vocal demands, which call for a skillful balance of natural and singing delivery. It’s no secret why good Moliere on stage is so rare.

At the same time, Senkbeil’s and his students’ attempts are more encouraging than another safe reading of a safe play. College is where you learn to fall and pick yourself up. The bigger the fall--like this one--the more you learn.

* “The Misanthrope,” Concordia University Studio Theatre, 1530 Concordia West, Irvine. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m. Ends Saturday. $5-$7. (714) 854-8002 ext. 314. Running time: 2 hours.

Brian C. Inouye: Alceste

Chris Tornow: Philinte

Dan Morton: Oronte

Kris Willson: Celimene

Melinda S. Quandt: Eliante

Nicole Plieseis: Arsinoe

David R. Warmbier: Acaste

Chad Block: Clitandre

A Concordia University Theatre Department production of Moliere’s play, translated and adapted by Neil Bartlett. Directed by Peter Senkbeil. Set: Tim Mueller. Lights: Robert Wyatt. Costumes: Esther Andreas. Sound: H. Paul Moon.