A clumsy Anglo-french project with little rhyme and reason
Tartuffe, the time-honoured (in its day controversial) 1664 comedy about religious charlatanism and hypocrisy, can leave you weeping with laughter – witness Tom Hollander’s memorably impish impostor at the Almeida in 1996. This frankly maladroit project, however – boasting an Anglo-french cast, flipping between the two languages and throwing mean, moody Peaky Blinders star Paul Anderson in at the deep end for his West End debut (splosh!) – induces tears of frustration. This is a show with insufficient rhyme – translator/playwright Christopher Hampton denies us, in English, the simple but effective comic pleasures of bouncy couplets (as per Molière’s original alexandrines); instead blank verse offers a quasi colloquial approach. And thanks to the yoking of the two languages and the relocation of the action to the US, it’s a show lacking clear artistic reason too. Nightmare logistique: unless you’re bilingual, you’ll likely spend a good half of two hours squinting at surtitles.
The swanky LA home of film mogul Orgon (Sebastian Roche) has been invaded by the knotweed of slyly grasping piety. First glimpsed in a David Blaine-esque cuboid interior, the frontage of which can magically cloud up in the blink of an eye, a bearded Anderson promises much in the way of presence – arms splayed like Jesus on the cross. Blessed with an enigmatic gaze and film star looks, he pads about barefoot in white shalwar kameez-style clothes, clutching a rosary and American-drawling his lines, part street fakir, part TV evangelist. Anderson initially convinces as the still, mock-serene centre of a household that’s in revolt against him yet can’t dislodge the interloper, while Orgon remains in his thrall; every revelation of the conman’s fraudulence absurdly taken as a sign to place greater trust in him.
Yet there’s no opportunity to build comic or dramatic momentum as the dialogue leaps about while the creative team’s thoughts on Tinseltown seem to have begun and ended at dressing the cast in garish, bling-ish costumes. Is Tartuffe unaware what happened to Weinstein, you wonder, as Anderson’s creepy guru gropes the woman of the house (Audrey Fleurot’s Elmire) within the gaze of her hubby?
It fizzles out with some tedious, would-be topical allusions to Trump. As they say over the Channel: tant pis!