french mime

Karine Ricard, Pierre Simpson

and Benoit Saint-Hilaire

At Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs InToronto

***

Director Jean-Stèphane Roy's production of Molière's Le Misanthrope is a giddy collision of styles, and the play kicks off Théatre fran?ais de Toronto's 40th season in provocative fashion. Roy was responsible for TfT's award-winning L'Avare last year, also by Molière, which was raucous earthy bouffonnerie. For this more sophisticated, even bitter, comedy of manners, Roy has opted for an urban chic veneer that outrageously ricochets between neoclassical tragedy and slapstick comedy.

The focus of Molière's satire in Le Misanthrope (1666) is hypocrisy in all its many guises. The anti-hero Alceste (Julian Doucet) rages against two-faced behaviour in court circles where insincerity is the norm and truth has become the victim of social convention. Yet Alceste is obsessed with the 20-year-old widow Célimène (Karine Ricard), who is the epitome of insincerity, particularly in the dangerously capricious way she toys with her several beaus.

The other characters signify various degrees on the hypocrisy scale. Reason is represented by Alceste's friend Philinte (Pierre Simpson) and Célimène's cousin Eliante (Mélanie Beauchamp), who understand the art of compromise. The repressed Arsinoé (Gisèle Rousseau) professes friendship to Célimène with a knife in the back. Among Célimène's suitors, the vengeful bad poet Oronte (Benoit Saint-Hilaire) asks for criticism but can't take it, while Acaste (Manuel Verreydt) and Clitandre (Marc Ouimet) are models of intrigue and duplicity. This play does not end happily for most of the characters who are either betrayed, humiliated or insulted.

Roy has taken his directorial vision from today's obsession with celebrity, which for him is obviously a metaphor for both a double-standard and total self-absorption. In his program notes, Roy states that in Le Misanthrope, Molière denounced the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears more than 300 years ago.

Videocams track all the stage action on a screen and so we see a live performance through both our own eyes and the lens of the paparazzi. Roy has even mandated intrusive close-ups at key moments. There is no privacy.

The videographer is actor Eric Charbonneau, the only one dressed in 17th-century period costume, who also announces the acts and scenes and portrays three secondary characters. He is the physical accent. For example, when Alceste is spewing out his diatribe on the irritating people at court, Charbonneau acts out each description in merciless mime. He is always on stage like an insightful Greek chorus as the characters play out their games, shifting furniture before the next match-up. His role is also silently bringing our attention to important lines of text or philosophical ideas of note.

It is within this vulnerable fishbowl that Roy has set his updated treatment, which takes place in Célimène's sleek modernist apartment, courtesy of designer Glen Charles Landry. Nina Okens's clever costumes are specifically tailored to each character.

Alceste in his long black coat over black shirt, jodhpurs and boots is like a brooding rock star. The haute couture Célimène is the Imelda Marcos of Paris, with her endless pairs of shoes, each in its glass-covered cubby-hole. The court fops, whether in hair, dress or accessories, all make bizarre fashion statements. The moralistic Arsinoé's very outfit is hypocrisy writ large: Under her severe coat is a revealing backless dress.

This production is all about details. There is not one stylistic through-line; rather, each encounter is given its own expressionistic look.

For example Célimène and Arsinoé circle each other like stalking lionesses when their gloves finally come off. Philinte's recounting to Eliante about Alceste's day in court in Oronte's slander suit becomes a hilarious exercise in voice sync - Philinte mimes the words while Alceste behind him says the lines. Alceste's melodramatic lament about Célimène's betrayal as told to Philinte and Eliante is played like a vaudeville farce of trick chairs.

At times Roy may get too busy in his stage business, as with Oronte's over-the-top poetry recitation accompanied by outlandish physical movement, but there is always something to watch in this show.

The glory is the language as this young cast conquers Molière's Alexandrine couplets and finds the sense of dialogue within the verse. The English surtitles happily mirror Molière's rhymes. As in the staging, details of delivery are very important. The brilliant Doucet is a powerful actor and his melodramatic Alceste could happily find a home in a Racine or Corneille tragedy. In contrast, Ricard's brittle Célimène is straight out of Sex and the City. Against these two, Simpson and Beauchamp seem positively normal