French Toast
A pretty, soggy night of Molière
School for Husbandsis, and always was, about more than romance, more than a story of silly men and their domestic pursuits. The idea of its competition between the liberal and the zealot extends to silly men and the consequences of the way they use their power, with resonances floating all the way out into international relations.
In 1996, Beth Milles staged Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid, also a comedy about duplicity and deception, with the Actors’ Gang. Whiteface makeup was smeared, costumes were smudged, saliva sprayed from the actors mouths. The production delivered a grunginess and urgency that reflected the agony of Molière’s real-life circumstances while, at the same time, lifting the play out of the 17th century. (And again, these were actors who had worked together as a company for years.) When, that same year, Steven Wadsworth staged Marivaux’s Changes of Heartat the Taper — also a French comedy apparently about trifling with love, but actually about much more — he allowed into the witticisms a laconic tone, a wistful ennui that allowed the production to be as expansive as it was whimsical. To open Cuckold, Bedford has his company dance across the stage in a daisy chain, as though the evening were a frolic and little more. As it turns out, that’s exactly what it is.
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