Theater Review : ‘Educated Women’ Given a Polished Outing

One of Moliere’s last plays and greatest satires, “Educated Women,” currently at the Theatricum Botanicum in rustic Topanga Canyon, may give the first impression of being every feminist’s nightmare. On the surface, the play is a scathing send-up that depicts female scholars as addle-pated twits. Moliere seems to be making the case that women would be better off tending to their knitting (or other domestic concerns) while letting their menfolk handle the weightier issues that put their poor little brains on overload.

However, Moliere, never comfortable without tongue planted firmly in cheek, is after bigger game than uppity females. On closer inspection, he’s actually gunning for his favorite target--those pretentious Parisian intellectuals who harried him throughout his career, succeeded in getting his masterwork “Tartuffe” banned for years and remained a general nuisance to him until the end of his days. “Educated Women” is one of Moliere’s most lethal counterattacks on his detractors.

The foppish Trissotin, played by Philip Littell, hilariously embodies Moliere’s worst nightmare, an empty-headed poseur whose absolute lack of talent does not impede his rapacious pursuit of intellectual notoriety.

Indeed, most of Paris considers Trissotin to be notorious--a notorious bore. It is only in the household of the unfortunate Chrysale (David Ellenstein) that Trissotin has found an audience for his nonsense. Chrysale’s wife Philaminte (Susan Angelo), his sister Belise (Melora Marshall) and his daughter Armande (Holly Orfanedes), Trissotin’s fawning acolytes, are spectacularly dizzy dames whose dilettantish dabblings in philosophy and the sciences have evidently destroyed their common sense.

In contrast to the other women in the family, Chrysale’s sensible daughter Henriette (Inara George) is a real hearth-and-home kind of gal who just wants to marry her adored Clitandre (Kristofer Soul), a handsome young man of good sense and family. Chrysale is delighted with the match, but his missus, who “wears the pants,” has other ideas.

Littell, perhaps best known as a performance artist, also did the new translation for the play. No stranger to the classics, Littell, who collaborated with David Schweizer on the highly regarded “Plato’s Symposium” a few seasons back, has brushed the cobwebs off this seldom-produced satire and given it a sprightly, thoroughly contemporary new sound.

Littell’s portrayal of the insufferable Trissotin is as modern as his translation. Wittily underplayed, Trissotin slyly promotes his own venal ends while leaving the pedantic posturings to the women. And posture the women do, particularly Marshall, who flounces and froths her way through a delightfully overblown performance.

Director Ellen Geer leads her vigorous cast through this exhilarating romp, a production as polished as the Topanga terrain is rough. Cushions are a must, but a sore backside is a small price to pay for this delightful broadside.

* “Educated Women,” Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. Saturdays, 8 p.m. through Aug. 6; Sundays, 3 p.m. through Aug. 21. (310) 455-3723. $12. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.