Ha, humbug Brown’s well-honed Misanthrope BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	The Misanthrope. By Molière, translated by Richard Wilbur. Directed by Spencer Golub. With Matt Biagini, Madhi Salehi, Abe Smith, Claire Karpen, Caitlin Marshall, Sharon Ambielli, Ellen Darling, Vanessa Gonzalez Echarte, Afreen Akhter, Annabel Topham, Zoe Weingart, and Sargon de Jesus. At Brown University Theatre/Sock And Buskin through March 21.

Yes, the French have had the Gaulle to give us hick Yanks a hard time for a long time. But they’ve also given us the satires of Molière and the cinema of François Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard, which have helped us cope with Gallic irascibility, a trait the nation is as proud of as their cheese.

The current Brown University Theatre production of Molière’s The Misanthrope draws a parallel between the two contributions, using the fun-loving seriousness of the cinéastes to hone the edges of the playwright’s verbal poniards.

The questionability of accurate translation also comes into play at the opening, as the cast declaims both cynical and romantic quotes from French films at us. You see, further stylizing and complementing Molière’s offering is poet Richard Wilbur’s clever transformations of Alexandrines into rhymed iambic pentameter.

That makes this all a receding funhouse mirror version of a version of a version, yet distortion isn’t a problem in this interpretation by director Spencer Golub. After all, self-delusion and the illusions of public personas is getting skewered here, so the broader the target, the easier it is to add to this delicious cross-century shish kebab.

We will always have men like the misanthrope of the title with us, whenever and whatever self-impressed language they speak. Alceste, given an insouciant intensity by Matt Biagini, thinks of himself as sincerity incarnate. To be dishonest when others ask for our opinions about them, he insists to his friend Philinte (Madhi Salehi), is to be cowardly and dishonest. Politeness and the lubrication of sociable evasions are lies, unworthy behavior for such a virtuous man as he.

Alceste’s conviction is immediately put to the test when a young sycophantic courtier, Oronte (Abe Smith), praises him and implicitly expects the same in return when he reads one of his sonnets aloud and asks for a frank opinion. The responding litany of criticisms leads, of course, to gaining an enemy.

Oronte is one of the numerous suitors of Célimène (Sharon Ambielli), whom Alceste is madly in love with, even though he hates her coquettish ways in other women. (Loooooong pauses, quel cinematique, in more than one conversation, signal to us that despite all this horsing around, love is serious business.) Her flirtatious cousin Éliante (Ellen Darling) is a potential rival for his affections, though no threat is greater than her ostensible friend Arsinoé (Vanessa Gonzalez Echarte). The matron is one of Molière’s most viperous hypocrites, cloaking her venomous criticisms of Célimène in selfless and pious motives. The three actresses anchor the production nicely, complementing Biagini’s nerve-wracked Alceste.

Transposed from the Paris of the 17th century to the early 1960s, by which time the Cahiers du cinéma film critic crowd had transferred their theories from ink onto celluloid as filmmakers, this production provides plenty of lipped cigarettes and café chat. In fact, the set by Michael McGarty principally consists of café tables, and much of the conversation takes place over the big black telephones on each, underscoring the remoteness and alienation of the speakers. One expects Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir to be seated frostily back to back.

The ambience is sufficiently inauthentic, in existential terms, that you expect lies to precipitate out of the atmosphere and plunk to the stage, as do the scattered leaves and playing cards, recurrent motifs, that characters keep tossing about. Director Golub keeps the tone as surreal as the self-delusions. A man in a homburg (Sargon de Jesus) often stands about as impassive as a Magritte apple. Characters yelp in comical dread at the brink of an open manhole that yawns before them as bored as an Uncaring Universe. At a couple of points, characters engage in a little handshake tango of hesitancy/reluctance that cleverly, and humorously, betokens the sort of social/sociological seesawing that the play is all about. Good touch.

Initially staged in 1955, the production of Wilbur’s translation that was developed in New York in 1977 caused a bit of a tiff with the poet when the producer demanded extensive cuts in the text after previews. In the 21/4-hour Brown staging, abrupt jumps in the action make it appear that even more was elided. Nevertheless, since the overall attempt and effect here is so stylized, and since the basic relationships are so clear-cut, I for one didn’t miss the segues. Besides the yuks, the offering here is cerebral rather than emotional — despite the romantic soundtrack music and the theatrical versions of soft-focus close-ups in some Alceste-Célimène scenes. Golub and this competent cast have given us plenty to think about as well as laugh at, so tears would just be de trop.