Gossip Still Fuels Moliere’s ‘The Misanthrope’

As part of its new three-show repertory, A Noise Within opened Moliere’s “The Misanthrope” over the weekend. Already up, running and visibly sweating: Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline.” Still to come: Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” a play that can be classified as “damp” under any circumstances.

No sweat of any sort, not the merest dribble, can be detected on director Sabin Epstein’s spare, crisp staging of “The Misanthrope,” now at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex.

Moliere’s 1666 crank has been relocated to 1949. The postwar couture is nicely suggested by costume designer Angela Balogh Calin’s dress collection. Laura Karpman’s original music is equally persuasive, blending postwar bluesy jazz saxophone with classical intimations. It’s Moliere’s Paris by way of Edith Piaf’s.

Alceste (fine, stern, empathetic Mark Bramhall) finds himself in agony over the coquette’s coquette, Celimene (sly Abby Craden, who suggests a highbrow variation on Ava Gardner). Celimene’s ardent hangers-on intrude on Alceste’s happiness. The misanthrope’s friend and confidant, Philinte (Joel Swetow), preaches moderation and tolerance. Philinte meets his match in Moliere’s other primary figure of rational wisdom, Eliante (Hisa Takakuwa).

The play’s gossip--no comedy ever had more to say, more wittily, on the subject--fuels the action. Yet Moliere examined incisively our hunger for that which only makes us hungrier. When Celimene and her sometime rival, Arsinoe (Deborah Strang), take turns “defending” each other’s reputations, you’re hearing repartee rivaled in English only by Congreve’s “Way of the World,” which came a few decades later. Centuries later, we continue, as Congreve predicted, to gather “like the coroner’s inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.”

Like most classics--real ones, not simply plays old enough to qualify for that designation--”The Misanthrope” is often adapted to different eras and to varying degrees of frippery. The late Garland Wright’s remarkable staging at the Guthrie Theater shifted it to the brink of the French Revolution, casting a long, dark shadow on the proceedings. The rather stupid Robert Falls production, seen 11 years ago at the La Jolla Playhouse, plunked Alceste and the gang down at a Hollywood mogul’s hillside pad, rife with aerobicized poseurs.

A Noise Within isn’t trying anything radical, by any yardstick. Director Epstein and his designers, however, manage to fold one time frame into another, gradually. In Act 2, each character (save Alceste) trades 1949 clothes for 17th century garb, ostensibly worn for a masked ball. It’s a handy way of suggesting how the past informs the present.

Bramhall has a naturally melodious ear and voice for translator Richard Wilbur’s unerring couplets, and he keeps our sympathies properly off-balance regarding this man of “hard virtues.” Swetow’s Philinte, Takakuwa’s Eliante, Richard Soto’s Oronte and Strang’s Arsinoe take the stage with authority.

Don Llewellyn’s scenic design confines the action to the middle third of the wide Luckman Theater stage. Its central blue-green panel frames each entrance and exit. Throughout, Epstein keeps his actors still, alert, attuned to a language-based rendition.

In the final scenes Epstein misses an extra layer of resonance. Craden’s Celimene falls back on pouting and petulance, just when we need something more revealing. Still, it’s thoroughly solid work all around. Moliere’s “fawning age” remains our own. The playwright’s seminal plea, spoken by Swetow--that “human frailty” should be met with understanding and a “heart well-armed with virtue”--isn’t going stale any time soon.

* “The Misanthrope,” A Noise Within, Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Cal State L.A., 5151 State University Drive. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m.; June 4, 2 and 7 p.m.; June 9, 8 p.m.; June 16, 8 p.m.; June 17, 2 p.m.; June 21, 8 p.m.; June 25, 2 p.m. Ends June 25. $22-$30. (323) 224-6420. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Mark Bramhall: Alceste

Abby Craden: Celimene

Joel Swetow: Philinte

Richard Soto: Oronte

Hisa Takakuwa: Eliante

Stephen Rockwell: Clitandre

J. Todd Adams: Acaste

Deborah Strang: Arsinoe

Apollo Dukakis: Dubois

Written by Moliere, translated by Richard Wilbur. Directed by Sabin Epstein. Scenic design by Don Llewellyn. Costumes by Angela Balogh Calin. Lighting by Ken Booth. Music by Laura Karpman. Stage manager Tricia Druliner.