The appeal of classics is how they continue to speak to us across the centuries. Molière’s 1664 comedy Tartuffe is a telling example, offering both acute insights into religious hypocrisy as well as the ways that people can be hoodwinked into absurd ideas that go against their own self-interest — while wrapped in a domestic farce played broadly for laughs. It’s no wonder that New York is getting two revivals this spring. The first, dubbed André De Shields Is Tartuffe, is a fleet-footed bit of camp theater-making in a noteworthy setting: the sumptuous library of House of the Redeemer, a late Gilded Age mansion on the Upper East Side built by a Vanderbilt heir around a two-story library from an early 17th-century Ducal palace in Urbano, Italy. That remarkable space — with its elaborately painted coat of arms on the 25-foot-tall ceiling, a monumental fireplace, a ballustrade gallery with dark-stained wooden paneling — serves as the performing space. The audience are seated in padded folding chairs in three rows on three sides of the space, with the cast shuffling to the center of the rich carpet to deliver their lines.
De Shields, a belated Tony winner in 2019 for Hadestown, portrays the title character with a delicious camp hauteur, entering in a floor-length cassock of rich red and a chunky necklace with a crucifix about three times the size of Flavor Flav’s clock. (The lush costumes are by Tere Duncan.) While the 79-year-old sometimes stumbles on his lines (he uses a leather-bound book as a cheat sheet occasionally), De Shields has a steely presence that convinces you of his ability to wheedle his way into the the favor and pocketbook of the wealthy nitwit Orgon (Chris Hahn). He also, of course, knows how to make an entrance — in this case, while crooning a warbly version of the Nina Simone standard “Feeling Good.”
Tartuffe doesn’t make that first appearance until the third act (of five), after we’ve heard a good deal about the character from Orgon, his similarly besotted mother (Todd Buonopane), and the members of Orgon’s household who are exasperated by the ways that their paterfamilias has been so blinded by Tartuffe’s malicious scheming: his second wife, Elmire (Amber Iman), his two mostly grown children, hot-headed Damis (Tyler Hardwick) and sweet-natured Mariane (Alexandra Socha), Orgon’s clear-headed sibling Cleante (Hannah Beck), and particularly the no-nonsense family maid (Phoebe Dunn, who bizarrely adopts a Cockney accent for much of the show despite the French setting). Each tries to alert Orgon to the dangers of his deepening devotion to Tartuffe, who’s demanded that Orgon break off Mariane’s engagement to her wide-eyed beloved, Valere (Charlie Lubeck), so that Tartuffe can marry the much-younger woman himself.
But Orgon has gone too far down Tartuffe’s rabbit hole, a condition that may seem familiar to those with loved ones who’ve spent so much time watching cable news that they’ve twist their worldview into pretzels that are unable to accommodate any contradictory facts. When his son reports that he caught Tartuffe making advances on Elmire, Orgon is quick to turn on Damis: “You scheming rat! I see your game: You’re trying to tarnish his good name.” (Cunningly, Tartuffe then begs Orgon to forgive his son.)
Molière continues to have sharp observations about human nature and our susceptibility to being misled, all packaged in a featherweight domestic scenario. The lightness is underscored by Ranjit Bolt’s skillfully silly verse translation, which highlights many of the jokes with the rhyme at the end of each four-stressed couplet. While some of director Keaton Wooden’s cast occasionally lapse into a kind of sing-song delivery, most find ways to elide the lines to make their speech flow more conversationally. There’s also a good deal of variation in performance style, from realistically grounded to sitcom-worthy double-takes, to sometimes mixed results. The real standouts are Iman, who brings a regal elegance to a somewhat underwritten role, and Hahn, who delivers a fully symphony of sycophantic credulity that leads to his undoing. And then there’s De Shields, a force of nature who wears his deviousness as easily as his glittery jewelry and who seems unbowed even at the moment of his improbable, deus-ex-machina comeuppance. ★★★☆☆
ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS IS TARTUFFE
House of the Redeemer, Off Broadway
Running time: 90 minutes (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through November 23 for $92 to $192
Culture Sauce 