Leading role
Pawtucket’s Burbage Theatre debuts in new home with The School for Lies’
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PAWTUCKET - Long before “6aturday Night Live,” there was Celimene’s salon, a place in aris in 1666 where “frenemies” got together to engage in clever repartee, fawning over one another in person but skewering folks behind their backs.
This salon, of course, is an imaginary place, envisioned in David ,ves’ “The 6chool for Lies,” the opening production of Burbage Theatre Company’s ninth season and the first in a new home at 59 Blackstone Ave.
The play is a variation on the themes the 17th century playwright Moliere pursued in “The Misanthrope,” and it’s as witty and sharp as any modern television satire.
Burbage’s production is the same brilliantly performed, fast paced and laughout-loud funny. The new theater space, moreover, gives the company room for creative lighting and a set that designer Andrew Iacovelli anchors with an outrageously ornate, purple sofa. Not much else is needed; that sofa says it all.
Ives published “Lies” in 2012, but in homage to Moliere he wrote the entire play in rhyming couplets. Not your thing Think again. The format, peppered with contemporary language, turns out to be clever fun.
Get entirely in Celimene’s salon, the story centers on )rank, a misanthropic sort who admits he “treats all men with uniform disgust.” He claims to despise the gossip and hypocrisy that permeate society and seeks only truth, which he speaks with unfiltered bluntness.
“He’ll pillory people just on principle,” one character says.
Nevertheless, Frank is attracted to Celimene, the beautiful widow who would seem to be the embodiment of everything he despises. That’s just the first of several infatuations involving dissembling suitors and conniving characters. Then there is the witchy Arsinoe, a gossip who’d like nothing better than to take down Celimene.
Throw in a couple lawsuits and misidentifications, and you have a complicated narrative that’s made perfectly clear in Burbage’s entertaining production. The cast is uniformly excellent, from James Lucey as the insufferably cranky Frank to Andrew Iacovelli in two minor roles, as a butler and Frank's manservant, in which he is hilarious.
Catia brings Celimene to life in her elegant appearance, her mannered pretense and her flashes of honesty. You can’t look away from her performance -- or from her gorgeously over-the-top ensemble. Director Jeff Church and stage manager, lighting designer and costume designer Jessica Winward collaborated on the costumes, which are stunning.
As an actor, Church has shown how he can find all the right pauses and emphasis to make sense of the most dense theatrical dialogue, and as director of “Lies,” he shares that ability with his cast, bringing clarity to the couplets and never missing the opportunity for a laugh.
His actors, moreover, bring their own gifts to the rhymes and to the sentiments honest or otherwise -- expressed by the denizens of the salon Victor Neto as Philinte, who pines for (liante, well played with a burst of craziness by Gabrielle McCauley; the pompous Clitander ( Richard Noble), the self-delusional Oronte (Vince Petronio) who fancies himself a poet, and Acaste, a wealthy marquis who, in Matthew Fagan's portrayal, is an unexpectedly funny character.
Rounding out the cast is the inimitable Valerie Westgate as gossip monger Arsinoe, clad tellingly in black lace and matching makeup.
Giving these 17th century characters traction in the 21st century are Ive's ingenious rhymes and his pointed observations about hypocrisy and corrupt power. As Frank says, “6ociety is a school for lies.” Don’t be late for this class act.
erformances of “The 6chool for Lies” continue through 2ct. 20 at Burbage Theatre Company’s new location, 59 Blackstone Ave. Tickets are $25 general admission, $15 for students, and are available online at www.burbagetheatre.org. )or information, email info burbagetheatre.org or call (401) 484-0355. High school students are admitted for free to any performance that isn’t sold out.