Twice the fun

SFGT's double dose of Molière

by Bill Rodriguez

TARTUFFE and THE SCHOOL FOR WIVES. By Jean Baptiste Molière, translated by Richard Wilbur. Directed by Fred Sullivan Jr. With Sam Babbitt, Gwyn Anderson, Nigel Gore, Barbara McElroy, Michael Sloan. At Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre through April 29.

You can't have too much of a good thing, not when it comes to Molière energetically acted and cleverly directed. And two much is just what Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre has for us, staging both Tartuffe and The School for Wives on alternate nights, like a troupe that knows they'd better have an encore ready in case the laugh-addicted audience gets rowdy.

Well, calm down, farce fiends. Trinity Rep actor Fred Sullivan Jr. ringmastered the festivities as director, costume designer Marilyn Salvatore has gathered together sumptuous gowns and funny characterizing costumes (plaid pants and dress for the innocent young lovers), and a talented cast is risking chiropractic injuries switching to their second roles.

Tartuffe is probably the playwright's most-staged comedy, first performed in 1664, the year after Wives. They came bursting forth from a speed-writer who was also an actor and director of his troupe, so they're chock-full of the kind of giddy goodies and physicality that actors love to dive into. Since his comedies each focus laser-like on a single human foible or hypocrisy, the laughs often come at the pace of a stand-up comedy act.

The title character in Tartuffe (Nigel Gore) is a religious poseur, a fake hyper-devout saint-in-waiting who has been taken into the home of the wealthy Monsieur Orgon (Sam Babbitt), who is in turn taken in by the fraud. Little time is wasted on niceties of plot development, or even resolution (Tartuffe's culminating comeuppance pops up arbitrarily in the last scene). Before the curtain rises, Orgon's family has been accusing the house guest of being a fake, so all the tale has to do is spin endless variations on the old patriarch's bullheadedness and Tartuffe's eye-rolling piety.

Delightfully, Gore plays the imposter straight, so the deadpan sincerity strikes us as especially, and hilariously, incongruous. In addition to wanting to wed Orgon's daughter Marianne (Gwyn Anderson), he seeks to bed his wife Elmire (Barbara McElroy). The Molière play structure -- stringing together comic opportunities -- is never funnier than in the big chase-around-the-table seduction scene. Director Sullivan's inventive and bawdy staging is knee-slappingly uproarious -- I don't want to spoil the sight gag, but I should warn everyone susceptible to homoerotic chest pains. With both plays, poet Richard Wilbur's verse translation is smart ("Did he say eviction?!" "Yes I did. I'll watch my diction.") and there's not a sing-song delivery to be heard.

The School for Wives rocks the house even harder, framed by the carnival-costumed cast singing a witty commentary on the tale that unfolds in-between. The joke here is that a wealthy bachelor, Monsieur Arnolphe (Babbitt), has figured out how to obtain the perfect wife -- raise a girl in a convent to keep her submissive and stupid. But the wide-eyed and preposterous naïf he has created by this method, his ward Agnes (Anderson), is sought by a young man, Horace (Michael Sloan), who has confided in him about his amorous campaign. Of course, Arnolphe remains both confidant and rival, trying to thwart the smitten couple as best he can.

Contrasting with his passive Tartuffe role, Babbitt here is a fast-talking, take-charge kind of aristocrat, which all the more amplifies his sputtering frustration at not being able to keep the young lovers apart. Anderson is even more hilarious as Agnes, playing her as a tra-la-la-ing sweet-natured simpleton whose binary brain simply can't register arguments that go against her heart. Sloan's Horace mellows nicely from seducer to suitor, all but emanating tiny cartoon hearts from his chest as his ardor swells. Incidental roles can be real scene-stealers in farce, and Laurie E. Herbst gives a smart-aleck, donut shop-waitress pizzazz to the servant she plays in Tartuffe, and supplies a hapless, wincing charm to the servant in Wives, well allied with Kerry Callery as fellow minion.

For the silliness of farce to keep us in thrall, pace is all-important. An increasing number of balls must be kept in the air, yet they can't blur so fast that we lose track of what's going on. And stopping the momentum is usually deadly. Sullivan directs these comic masterpieces with finger-snapping briskness, regarding some exchanges as plot land mines that make characters explode into action. (As a hot-tempered and suspicious son in Tartuffe, Sloan seems shot out of a cannon when he roars into one scene, bursting from a closet where he has been hiding.) Yet clarity is foremost, so in Wives we get some action mimed when we otherwise might lose track of goings-on.

The production values on display here owe a lot to Trinity Rep, the home of set designer William Lane as well as the director and costume designer. But SFGT has pulled together the acting talent that makes these riotous plays come alive. When the theater picks up and moves to Pawtucket in a couple of years, they're going to be worth hitchhiking to get to.