Tartuffe
Benedict Nightingale, New Statesman
Cyrano de Bergerac - who lived at the same time as Moliere, proclaimed that playwright a genius and (so Rostand, his creator, slyly suggests) was plagiarised by him - received rough punishment for his more scurrilous writings. His enemies hired a servant to drop a log on his head, and the bump killed him. The real-life reprisals inflicted on Moliere for Tartuffe were rather subtler. The play was banned, then banned again, and only licensed by Louis XIV in a third version which ended, not entirely coincidentally, with the long rapturous tribute to the sun king's wisdom and humanity that even today every patriotic Frenchman can quote by heart. The pi were never reconciled to Moliere, however; and, though they didn't succeed in having him burned as the more ferocious of them wanted, they can take much of the responsibility for the misery of his declining years and the obscurity of his burial.
In other words, Tartuffe drew blood, froth, pus, venom and lust about everything else from those of its day who were over-apt to substitute sanctimonious profession for spiritual practice. Our own era is not altogether lacking in such hypocrisies, either; but I venture to suggest that, in the unlikely event of their perpetrators actually cntering a theatre called the Pit, they will find little to offend them in Bill Alexander's bustling, bouncing production of the play. So insistent is it that Tartuffe is a fake, a charlatan, a con-man and crook, that it becomes an attack less on his self-serving conscience, more on his benefactor's lunatic credulity lesson religiosity, more on gullibility.
The instant impression you get from Antony Sher's grey smock, long black locks and white slanting eyes is of an economy-sized Rasputin; and it is reinforced when, not long afterwards, we find him staring, memerising, hypnotising the wretched Orgon into siding with him against his justly aggrieved son. There is something in him of the jungle animal, something of the goblin, something of the dybbuk. Surprised, he yelps and screeches. Sexually excited, he snorts and voluptuously gargles, as if readying his tongue, throat and stomach for the task of ingesting his prey. Irked, he somehow squeezes a brusque snook or an up-yours jab into the act of crossing himself. Exultant, he crackles, leaps, waves his arms above his head in a sort of victory dance. It is aIl very primitive and anarchic; yet that doesn't prevent a slimy-curate intonation or Wardour-Street gesture appearing from no-where when Tartuffe wishes to impress a mark or befuddle his brains.' The Mad Monk has, it seems, taken a course or two in PR.
It is a very busy, inventive performance. Give Sher a spare moment and he can be relied on to fill it with something startling: daubing jam on to his palms and thrusting out his arms in imitation of the crucified Christ; for instance, or surreptitiously removing those stigmata to give the impression of a miracle healing. Give him a rosary, as Alexander's production does, and it successively becomes a snare with which literally to entrap Orgon's wife, a noose and a whip with which to make spectacular gestures of humility and self-hatred, and a flail with which to terrify his triumphant enemies. Whirling those big brown beads round his head in maniacal rage, snarling and spitting like a cornered chimp, he is rather terrifying, too. As a result, it's more than a little bathetic when someone reacts, as the script says he must, with a pious 'let us hope this will encourage him to return to the paths of virtue'. One might as wisely have said, as the foaming, lacerated Rasputin disappeared under the ice for the third time, 'let's hope this will cool him downs little'.
There's no doubting Mr Sher's resourcefulness and energy, but it is, perhaps, permissible to wonder if his interpretation is altogether apt. Surely Tartuffe should not be so obvious, so out-front a scoundrel as this. Surely Sher should have asked himself some questions about the internal geography of sanctimony as well as about greed and ruthlessness and revenge. Take the line (one characteristic of Christopher Hampton's unobtrusively colloquial translation) he has to deliver when he's asked if it wouldn't be ethical to help the son Orgon plans to disinherit: 'I would do anything I could for him, but from God's point of view it's just not on.' In Mr Sher's mouth that's smooth patter, the sort you can hear over three-card tricks in Oxford Street, and it's taken by his questioner as such. But suppose he and we were made to wonder if Tartuffe meant it. Suppose Tartuffe were so gifted a cheat as actually to mean it, at least at the moment. The most interesting hypocrite is, after all, the one who believes his own lies.
Still, Mr Sher may reasonably argue that it would be inappropriate, as well as anachronistic, to put Tartuffe on the analyst's couch. After all, Moliere dealt with humours rather than psyches, behaviour rather than motives, the outer rather than the inner; and, on that level at least, Bill Alexander's production brings its people ebulliently to life, procuring good, brisk, no-nonsense performances from Stephanie Fayerman, Alison Steadman and, above all, Nigel Hawthorne. It is always difficult to credit Orgon's obsession with Tartuffe, and doubly, trebly so here, given the glee and guilelessness of Sher's deceptions. But Mr Hawthorne, without exaggeration or embarrassment, presents us with a remarkably humane picture of a peppery, volatile man unself-knowingly in the grip of the love that dares not tell its name. He is besotted, disoriented, lost - and then suddenly, painfully found. If you want to see bravura acting, go and admire Sher; if you want to see feeling, intelligence and skill unobtrusively at work, go and enjoy that hardy perennial, Hawthorne.
Tartuffe
Milton Shulman, Evening Standard
IT TOOK five years of censorshlp before Moliere's Tartuffe was finally licensed in 1669 for public performances.
The Church had been deeply offended by this portrayal of the power of a religious bigot to terrorise a French household.
Nothing much has changed in 300 years. Almost every day one can read of families torn apart by sects claming an exclusive relationship with the Almighty.
Moliere, of course, was not attacking Catholicism but religious hypocrisy. Orgon has taken into his household the impoverished and p i o u s; Tartuffe.
He is impressed by Tartuffe's devotion to prayer, poverty and pessimism. Nothing gives him greater pieasure than being told that the world is a dunghill and that everything must be sacrificed for the love of God.
Orgon's family is less impressed with Tartuffe, whom they recognise as a cunning creep. Even when it is clear that Tartuffe has attempted to seduce Orgon's wife, Orgon indignantly rejects the evidence of his own son and, to punish his family, demands that his daughter marry Tartuffe and that his property be turned over to the bigot.
It needs a hilarious scene of seduction - in which Orgon's wife traps Tartuffe into revealing his true intentions - as well as the intervention of the King of France, to rid Orgon of his faith in the odious hypocrite.
The denouement is recognised as one of the most ludicrous in classic theatre but, the royal unmasking of Tartuffe does not seem out of place in Bill Alexander's production at The Pit, Barbican, with its leaning towards farce rather than comedy.
On this small stage. Moliere's message seemed to be coming at us through a loud-hailer and one wished for a more sotto voce touch to all the activity.
Antony Sher's interpretation of Tartuffe may have been responsible for my feeling that this production was occasionally going over the top.
Looking like a badly dressed Richard III, his cringing and his false humility were so evidently the mark of a villain that it is inconceivable Orgon would ever have been taken in by him.
When he has to lift his cassock and drop his pants to demonstrate his sexual intentions, I felt an unnecessary note of vulgarity had intruded upon Moliere's fastidious style.
Nigel Hawthorne's Orgon seems more of a ninny than usual because of Tartuffe's obviousness. His bursts of indignation were Gallic in their fury but his realisation of his own gullibility was very English in its resignation.
Alison Steadman gives a sophisticated d i g n i t y to Orgon's wife, while Katy Behean looks genuinely bewildered as Orgon's daughter.
Christopher Hampton's translation certainly h a s vigour but I felt the use of modern colloquialisms like "being on a short fuse" and "taking a dim view" were jarring in these 17th century surroundings.
Tartuffe
Suzie Mackenzie, Time Out
Looking like a Mohican Indian on the rampage, tongue licking out of the side of his mouth like a lizard trying to catch flies, Tony Sher's reptilian Tartuffe (Pit) takes over the stage with all the power normally associated with this most mercurial of actors. But in going all out for a bestial, almost psycopathic, malignancy Sher loses the more subtle and dangerous aspects of Moliere's character and creates a problem for Nigel Hawthorne who, confronted with such blatant evil, can only play Orgon as a credulous fool ready to be duped by any hypocrite willing to take God's name in vain. But if these excesses iron out some of the play's ambiguities Alison Steadman, as Orgon's wife, is there to provide new ones of her own. In the seduction scene, as Tartuffe attempts to grunt and sweat his way into her knickers she remains sweetly aloof - on guard but not repelled, fascinated by his sheer audacity and perhaps, not a little uninterested.
Tartuffe
Eric Shorter, Daily Telegraph
NO ONE wants to see the classics sent to the cleaners for the sake of making them glibly "accessible". But Moliere's "Tartuffe" revived by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Pit, Barbican, is such a straightforward war horse that unless something is done with it an English version is apt to drag.
The joke against Orgon, the pious paterfamilias, enthralled by his extremely religious house guest is stated in the first act, re-stated in the second, sustained in the third and only towards the cnd when he is forced to see how much of a mug Tartuffc has made of him does Orgon see the light.
Even then when it ought to be too late, since he has given away his property like Lear on impulse, Louis Quatorze turns out to be the deus ex machina to make a happy ending.
A few weeks ago at Bromley, Peter Coe offered a late Victorian version in Miles Malleson's famous text with Leonard Rossiter as a sinister, lip-smacking villain, oozing lust and mischief. Now, in the dungeon studio at the Barbican, Bill Alexander's revival brings us a fresh translation by Christopher Hampton in blank verse, which takes us back to the 17th century with harpsichord music, period costume and one or two minor innovations.
But once again Tartuffe is acted with all the actor's stops out. Since the RSC's actor is Anthony Sher, the stops are plentiful. He looks like Olivier's Richard, dresses like a monkish hippy; flourishes a rosary of menacing wooden beads and literally cocks snooks behind his victim's back.
When he is deceived into making advances towards his host's faithful wife (the husband hidden reluctantly under the table) Mr Sher lowers his breeches as in a Whitehall farce - and he is funny in that obvious kind of way But it is Nigel Hawthorne as the man who trusts him who plays the old comedy for character rather than caricature and earns our gratitude, particularly in his attempts to persuade his old mother (Sylvia Coleridge) of the impostors wickedness.
lt is an enjoyable evening but the theme of hypocrisy and of religious idolatory needs subtler treatment in an unshockable era if its deeper truths are to touch us.
