True believers and false prophets

The Rolling Stones may not qualify for guru status, but they got it right when they sang “You can’t always get what you want….but you’ll get what you need.” Seventeenth century France at the fashionable level, way up there where the Catholic Church was most visible, didn’t want a king-protected playwright pointing out all its foolishness and hypocrisies — but that’s what it needed, and that’s what it got.

In 1664, the immortal Moliere turned his laser wit on the sensationally pious, and they turned on him. Even Louis XIV, the Sun King himself, could go only so far in deflecting the outrage of those who made a living bamboozling the peasants, and “Tartuffe,” titled after the greatest fictional bamboozler of them all, was a perfect bull’s eye on Moliere’s back.

What keeps this 345-year-old masterpiece fresh is the same thing that distinguishes all classics: it speaks to the ages. Live Arts, under the direction of Betsy Tucker, approaches the work with its trademark combination of respect and joie de vivre. Coquetry and peacock-etry strut their two hours upon the stage in only slightly restrained finery from the Age of Excess. Gentlemen turn out their fine calves for the admiration of all and bosoms are thrust high — to the great shock of the religious hypocrite, Tartuffe, who vacillates between public outbursts of piety and private maneuvering on his host’s wife.

Though my favorite Moliere play is whichever one I’ve seen last, it wasn’t until seeing Live Arts’ crystal production that I concluded the play wasn’t really about Tartuffe. I think it’s about Orgon and all willingly and ardently deceived believers in false holiness. To counter his family’s warnings and protests, he not only attempts to marry off his daughter to the phony, he signs over his property and goods. That’ll show them! The more he’s proven wrong, the more he clings to his need to be right.

Using Richard Wilbur’s lyrical translation, Tucker’s cast glides through the play like waltzing figures in a music box. David Dwyer’s set, three symmetrical doors set in walls of enormous, ornate but empty frames, creates the twin impressions of lavish hollowness, a fitting metaphor for the “affected zeal and pious bravery” of the pretender.

Chris Patrick brings an unexpected complexity to the title role. We know Tartuffe is darkly comic, creepy, sensual, and dissembling; we’re on the comfortable side of right and we see through him, of course. But Patrick adds just a touch of snake — slithering movements, lidded eyes, an extended hiss at the ends of some words that is just a trifle disturbing as he stretches the border beyond farce to give us a glimpse of evil.

Next to him, Adam Smith’s Orgon is almost childlike in his simplicity. Being spiritually blind and unable to distinguish genuine devotion from empty gesture, he naturally gravitates to the most visible, outward show. If Tartuffe were a televangelist, Orgon would be the one mailing in the rent money. Only his mother shares this willful blindness. The black-gowned matriarch, MME. Pernelle, (Linda Zuby) sees what she wants to see and clings to the belief in Tartuffe’s innocence with all the fervor of the guilty.

Orgon’s wife, Elmire (Daria Okugawa), and brother-in-law Cleante (Allen Robinson) do what they can to balance the craziness with reason, but get nowhere until Elmire sets up the madcap seduction scene under her husband’s very nose.

All comedy needs young lovers facing a trial, and “Tartuffe” has the porcelain complexioned Mariane (Amalia Oswald) and her long-legged lover Valere (Alex Grubbs). Their spat, complete with kiss and make-up orchestrated by the lady’s maid Dorine (Shawnna Pledger), is a satisfying piece of classic love-foolishness. In this case, Dorine is recognizable as the truth-telling jester, funny, practical, and one step ahead of everyone else.

Orgon’s son, Damis (Geoffrey Culbertson) for all his curls and dandy dress, desperately tries to sway his father from his self-destructive course, only to find himself disinherited. He and Valere are a pleasing pair — tall, blond-wigged, full of youthful hot blood and swagger and offer a gratifyingly wholesome note to Tartuffe’s last stand.

All artists must first be observers, and Moliere was a great observer of human nature. When Tartuffe sighs “Those who serve heaven must expect abuse,” it’s clear that Moliere had his finger on the pulse of martyr complexes everywhere. Set in the mid-seventeenth century, it’s easy to laugh at the foibles of fools. But perhaps it’s time to set “Tartuffe” among one of those 20,000-member mega-churches in Texas and see what happens. Tartuffe in a business suit and an expensively blow-dried coif — Orgon following him around with his checkbook open — who says the 17th century has nothing to say to the 21st?

Margaret Lawrence is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association. She teaches drama at CCHS.

Want to go?
What: Moliere’s “Tartuffe”
Where: Live Arts, 123 E. Water St., Charlottesville
Call: (434) 977-4177 or visit LiveArts.org
Playing through May 23