TARTUFFE run dates: 4/17/2008 - 4/27/2008 E. C. Mabie Theatre, University of Iowa, Iowa City ____________________________________________________________________________
The production of TARTUFFE currently playing at the University of Iowa has much to recommend it – a wonderful set design, plenty of great costumes, near-effervescent lighting, and topnotch performances are among its many charms – yet it could have been better than it is.
With too many minutes and too many words, the new translation (by Leah Pesola, a graduate student at the university) is perhaps a little too faithful to the original. The play – which by almost any standard could use some trimming – is all here, including some speeches that add nothing to the action whatsoever. (Some of this stuff might have been necessary to appease the monarchy or certain audiences 300-plus years ago, but it is dreck that bogs down the otherwise sparkling dialogue.)
Pesola has often done a fine job with translating much of the French verse into English rhyme. (Would that the rest of it fared as well as the best parts.) At the April 19 performance I attended, it was difficult to determine which of the awkward moments could be attributed to the text and which were due to young performers struggling with meter and rhythm -- but this version of the popular comedy is certainly no clunker.
My favorite things about this English version of TARTUFFE are the words and phrases – and once, an entire paragraph – left untranslated, because Pesola has delightfully (and frequently) left French interjections throughout the comedy classic. I appreciated the occasional anachronistic term, too – most memorably, I believe, is "creep" – but the choice to keep so many French terms is the absolute best, an ingenious device that just gets funnier every time it happens. Sure, my guess is that 90 percent of the audience doesn’t understand at least 95 percent of the French, but it is still hilarious.
Some of the length of this production is due to actors who hesitate or simply have some trouble getting their lips around all the rhyme, but there are plenty of great actors in this show.
A pert Helen Kim is Dorine, the smart-aleck maid whose saucy back-talk and droll asides are almost as funny as her sardonic eye-rolls and her sore-feet-propped-on-the-furniture. The faces she makes are fantastically funny, and she imbues the role with a barely-leashed physicality that sustains scene after scene.
Nick Garcia is a broadly funny revelation in the title role, and his full-tilt twangy smarm is fun to watch. He gives Monsieur Tartuffe the aura of a freshly-showered snake-oil salesman, and – like so many folks in this show – seems to be having a ball every moment he is on the stage. It’s a great performance that provides the show with its center.
Several other performers do fine work – Cynthia Pohlson and Bradley W. Anderson are a riot as feuding young lovers, Spencer Gilbert is fantastically entertaining in three distinct roles, Rebekah Stein employs some broad vocal and physical humor that make the show’s biggest scene a perfect triptych, and Martin Andrews makes a handsome young hothead – but it is still the stupendously talented John Watkins who darn near walks off with the entire show.
As the tentative Orgon, who is practically (okay, literally) besotted with Tartuffe’s false piety, Watkins is side-splittingly funny. His voice trembles ever so gently at times, then rises into a quaver, and this actor uses impressive vocal control to give his character the perfect sound. He turns in a physically demanding performance, too, with a big scene that has him scrambling all over the stage and under furniture – all at top speed – and has all of us in stitches. He’s in absolute top form here, so much so that if the Mabie Theater had aisles we may just have been rolling in them.
Superb tech provides a great backdrop for performances like this – though I must confess not getting the reference repeated in a clock-and-chime theme that can’t have been an accident – and David Thayer’s scenic design and Adam Boyer’s lighting design are at the top of TARTUFFE’s technical heap.
Not for children or the prudish, this very funny show is well worth even the extended visit required to enjoy its many great moments.
