Theater Reviews: Bohemian Cowboy, Tartuffe, Black Women — State of the Union

Scott Hall

Bohemian Cowboy

Annie Terry

The Increased Difficulty by The Increased Difficulty

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More About

• Steven Leigh Morris
• Madame Pernelle
• Josh Chambers
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

TARTUFFE As Madame Pernelle (Judith Scarpone) is giving her imperious farewell lecture to the family, parading in a peach pantsuit with flowing scarves (costumes by Leah Piehl), about a dozen of her suitcases drop from the rafters. They hit with violent thuds, eliciting a blithe response from the family. Such is the lunacy in this present-day San Fernando Valley suburb (set by Ken McKenzie), modernized by director Josh Chambers from Molière’s 17th-century Parisian-estate setting. Meanwhile, Pernelle’s son and master of the house, Orgon (Tim Cummings), stands on a platform high in the sky, dressed like a CIA agent and being caressed by an identically dressed twin, white-gloved figure in a gray ski mask. The double is the interloper-impostor Tartuffe (Antonio Anagaran). Orgon speaks all of Tartuffe’s lines through a microphone, so that the pair are entwined psychologically, as well as physically. Their movements are a kind of choreographed duet, and Chambers’ direction contains many operatic elements. Though the physicalization simply renders austere what’s more amusing (and self-evident) in Molière’s Baroque farce — that Tartuffe is a demon who resides inside Orgon’s soul — it’s nonetheless one of many absorbing theatrical conceits. Another is the complicating reality that Pernelle’s family is here lost in space. Granddaughter Mariane (Megan Heyn) lounges forlornly on one of the lawn chairs, inhaling fumes from aerosol cans that lie scattered at her feet. She’s also in the habit of cutting herself — perhaps in response to the news that her insane father is pushing her to marry his beloved Tartuffe (i.e., himself?) — yet Mariane’s self-mutilation reveals layers of depressions that would go back years. Curiously, this gives some validity to Pernelle’s screed against the family’s spiritual malaise. Even Cleante (Matt Foyer) — Orgon’s brother-in-law and the play’s voice of reason — gives his nicely rendered if slightly tedious advice while lounging and swilling martinis. So we have an unhinged household threatened by the menacing hypocrisy of a pious zealot, whose appearances are accompanied by the dull rumble of Nathan Ruyle’s sound design. Molière’s comedic indignation has been boiled down to a slightly glib nihilism. Donald Frame’s faithful and full-bodied verse translation is completely at odds with Chambers’ staging. The rhyming comes filled with whimsy, yet Chambers is tone deaf to the humor inherent in the text. Molière’s is a humor of behavior; Chambers’ is the humor of despondency. One almost wishes that Chambers would be bolder — staging a meditation on the play rather than the play itself, an opera based on the text rather than the full text itself. What we have instead is bloated austerity — a meringue pie filled with air yet layered with steak and beans and banana cream. Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through March 22. (626) 683-6883. (Steven Leigh Morris)

GO  THE TRIAL OF THE CATONSVILLE NINE In May 1968, Father Daniel Berrigan (Andrew E. Wheeler ) and eight other peace activists seized 378 draft documents and publicly burned them with napalm to protest the Vietnam war and other American government atrocities. Drawing on court transcripts, this play is an account of their trial, which ended in conviction and prison terms for all defendants. The script — Saul Levitt’s stage adaptation of Berrigan’s original verse rendition — lays out an impassioned argument for following the dictates of one’s conscience, even when it involves breaking the law. Each defendant relays what spurred them to take action: a nurse (Paige Lindsey White) who witnessed American planes bomb Ugandan villages, burning children, a couple in Guatemala (Patti Tippo and George Ketsios), who saw American money used to outfit the police while peasants starved, an Alliance for Progress worker (Corey G. Lovett) who became privy to CIA machinations in the Yucatán. Taking it all in is the presiding judge (Adele Robbins). Her sympathies, reflecting ours, lean toward the defendants, even as she rules against them. Under Jon Kellam’s direction, cogent performances successfully counteract the script’s didactic language and cumbersome progression, even though Robbins’ performance lacks nuance. Perhaps most disturbing is the piece’s reminder that the aggression and subterfuge of the Bush administration constituted not a reversal of past policy but a radicalized extension of it. Actors’ Gang at the Ivy Substation Theater, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through March 21. (310) 838-4264. (Deborah Klugman)