Fantastic farce

URI's The Miser is no cheap thrill

by Bill Rodriguez

THE MISER. By Moliere. Directed by Anne Brady. With Michael Heckler, Gabriel Green, Fabio S. Iannella, Dawn Carreira, Anthony Luciano, and Jason Harrington. At URI Theatre through April 25.

Moliere's The Miser, a gold standard for period comedies, is being pumped up to breathless, breakneck farce at URI Theatre, and the result is hilarity with wind burn. Directed by off-Trinity actor Anne Brady, the social satire pummels with brick-bats rather than skewering with a stiletto, but the method works well.

Harpagon (Michael Heckler) is Rodney Dangerfield's kind of miser. He's so stingy that his horses, complains his coachman, are mere shadows in the shape of horses. He's so stingy that he won't pay you his respects, snipes another servant, he'll only lend them. Paranoid to perfection, Harpagon doesn't trust banks so he has buried his fortune in his garden. Of course, the gold becomes the object of desperate search by his son and his unscrupulous manservant La Fleche (Gabriel Green). The miser is so worried that someone will steal his treasure that he startles at every bird chirp from its vicinity. He also has the habit of talking to himself about his dear money and its location, so he's constantly terrified that someone has heard him.

His son, Cleante (Fabio S. Iannella, with delightful insouciance) dresses like a Day-Glo popinjay in purple boots, which fits his other excesses, such as his accumulating gambling debts. He has fallen in love with a young woman, not knowing that his father has arranged to marry her himself. His sister, Elise (Dawn Carreira), is in similar straits. She is smitten by Valere (Anthony Luciano), who she thinks is the new steward in the household but who is really of noble birth.

Ludicrous exchanges abound. To pay off his debts, Cleante agrees to outlandish interest (a mere five percent -- plus the 20 percent the lender says he had to pay), not knowing that the lender is his father. There is the inevitable confrontation and mutual accusations. Another high point is the flattery scene in which matchmaker Frosine (Jason Harrington, in drag) confides to the old man that his fiancé is repulsed by young men. Director Brady has Harpagon enter with a walker, grooving like a hexagenarian snap queen. Heckler is best with visual jokes, such as the gruesome running sight gag of him licking the hand of his betrothed like a lollipop.

Much of what makes classic comedies like this one so enduring is set pieces that we are eager to see over and over. The Miser has its share of them. There is Harpagon elaborating to the cook on how to economize with the wedding banquet. Don't fill the glasses until guests ask several times, he instructs, and feed them fatty foods that will fill them quickly. Joshua Willis is a low-key exasperated riot here, and also moments later when Jacques changes hats into his coachman role, snorting in empathy with his underfed charges.

The most commanding presence in the play enters only in the final scene, with Jhomphy R. Ventura as Elise's erstwhile fiancé, Count Anselme. But the chemistry, and the acting, by both pairs of lovers is entirely convincing, which carries us along for most scenes.

Director Brady has energized this comedy with bawdy eroticism as well as hell-bent energy. Clothing flies and couples couple at the drop of a feverish glance, to contrast with the miser's niggardly appreciation of life.

Production values are high, as usual at URI Theatre. The scenic design by Christopher Pickart consists of two stories of ornate windows, viewed from the inside, with three tiers of household accumulations at each side. Costume design by Charlotte M. Yetman characterizes nicely, and sound design by Charles Cofone, heavy on the Piaf, strikes all the right notes.