Brandon J. Dirden’s lush revival of Molière’s classic comedy The Imaginary Invalid opens with a visually stunning bit of stagecraft, as the masked cast emerges on a blank stage in stunning glow-lit costumes (by Karen Perry) to assemble Beowulf Boritt’s period drawing room set before our eyes, complete with a slanted ceiling that appears to be elaborately decorated with plaster relief flourishes. Soon, we meet the famously hypochondriacal aristrocrat Argan (Bill Irwin), seated in a plush recliner as he pores over a pile of medical bills for all the enemas, blood-lettings, and other treatments to which he’s eagerly subjected himself over the last month.
The only one willing to puncture his delusions about wobbly health is his longtime servant Toinette, played with anachronistic bluntness by Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex Girlfriend) in her Broadway debut. She’s the one who suggests all these physicians may be taking advantage of him and tries to persuade him to lay off the treatments and agree to let his lovely daughter (Ava Lalezarzadeh) marry her dim-but-hunky boyfriend Cleante (Daniel Croix Henderson).
Not everyone is on the same page: Argan’s second wife, Beline (played with Real Housewives villain energy by Crystal A. Dickinson) wants to ship the young woman off to a convent, while Argan hatches a plan to get her hitched to the scion of a family of physicians who himself is studying medicine. He’s hoping for round-the-clock medical attention and a family discount on his mounting doctors’ bills.
The actors leans into the farcical, predictable plot with scenery-chewing fervor, which is probably what’s required of 400-year-old punchlines that can sometimes shows signs of strain. Brooks Ashmanskas turns up as two different doctors, foppish in slightly different ways, and does his usual Brooks Ashmanskas vamping. Dickinson, wearing a dress that resembles a burlesque version of one of the queen’s outfits in SIX, uses that very outfit to punctuate one of her tantrums. Halfway through, when the show needs another straight man to balance the wackiness, Dylan Baker strides in as Argan’s practical-minded brother, hoping to persuade his relative to listen to reason (to little effect).
In a cast full of committed hams, Hiram Delgado stands out as a full case of fine swine. Delgado plays no less than three characters (four if you count the masked member of the acting troupe that opens and closes the show), and he gives each a distinct scene-stealing daffiness. There’s Bonnefoy, a double-speaking notary whom Beline has tapped for Argan to update his will in her favor. Then Thomas, the preening trainee physician whom Argan has chosen as Angelique’s fiancé and who delivers pompous speeches and flicks his pageboy hairdo like a would-be teen idol delusional about his looks. Finally, we meet Fleurant, an apothecary dressed like a bearded, somewhat bedraggled sheik and bearing a two-foot syringe whose contents will not reach the intended target. (No joke here is set up in vain, even if it reaches the wrong vein.)
High jinks and low humor abound here, and the cast seems committed to selling material that’s sometimes thinner than Perry’s gorgeously detailed costumes. Overall, it works. You may find yourself smiling in acknowledgement of the cast’s work more than laughing outright. That’s partly because Irwin seems more comfortable in the rare moments of clowning, including a bit of hat work performed at the show’s end, than in delivering a lead performance that relies mostly on his verbal skills. But he’s surrounded by a cast of zanies who elevate material that’s ultimately time-tested if not timeless. In the end, The Imaginary Invalid makes a mountain of laughs out of a centuries-old Molière hill. ★★★★☆
THE IMAGINARY INVALID
Todd Haimes Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through November 22 for $78 to $289