Theatre review: Frank McGuinness's contemporary take on Tartuffe
Naoise Dunbar and Emma Rose Creaner in Tartuffe, at the Abbey. Picture: Ros Kavanagh
- Tartuffe
- Abbey Theatre, Dublin
- ★★★☆☆
Finding contemporary resonances in a classic work is an inevitability every time one is staged. After all, any production is by definition a contemporary experience, watched by a contemporary audience in the here and now. The question, then, for any new staging of a canonical work, is how far to push this, how overt to make it.
The Abbey Theatre’s production of Frank McGuinness’s new version of Moliere’s 1664 comedy Tartuffe sees director Caitriona McLaughlin emphasising the supposed echoes of our moment to be found in his cautionary tale of hypocrisy, his warning that no good deed goes unpunished.
So, we get music ranging from techno to the Pet Shop Boys, rumours spread on servants’ smartphones, devilish deeds by MacBook. An opening scene of debauch will be familiar to the Netflix generation, while our first sighting of the titular villain is simultaneously, in a grey anteroom, kneeling in front of a webcam, self-flagellating.
Here’s our Tartuffe, or rather McLaughlin’s: a purveyor of fake news, an anti-social influencer, a one-man internet rabbit hole down which the Orgon household threatens to disappear. Taken together with Katie Davenport’s sumptuous design, McLaughlin’s approach provides a coherent frame, but there’s nothing here to convince us of Moliere’s specific relevance to the now. Despite its religious overtones, his is a timeless tale of human flaws and weaknesses, and all the better for it.
The abiding structural problem with the play is that its villain remains unseen, and merely talked about, for so long. As tedium threatens, there are compensations to be had in Geraldine Plunkett’s performance as a coruscating Pernelle, and Frank McCusker’s depiction of the naive Orgon. Pauline Hutton shines as Dorine, the outspoken and oddly tolerated maid who more than anyone knows “the ins and outs of this saga”. Katie Davenport’s colourful, detailed costumes are a constant visual delight, and her elaborately painted, many-doored dining room is gorgeous.
A chief pleasure throughout is Frank McGuinness’s text. His rhyming couplets are in keeping with the spirit of the original, delivering plenty of witty punchlines, playful rhymes and a good dose of Ulster earthiness.
Things pick up when we finally do meet Tartuffe, played with a brash swagger by Ryan Donaldson. That said, it remains hard to discern what Orgon ever saw in this conman. The seduction scene, in which Orgon’s wife, Elmire (Aislin McGuckin), seeks to expose the chancer’s lecherous ways and deviant schemes in full view of the gullible head of the household, is the highlight of the evening. It has a physicality that’s otherwise lacking for too long in the production.
- At Abbey Theatre until April 8. Touring to , Limerick, April 12-15; Black Box, Galway, April 18-22; Lyric, Belfast, April 25-29; Grianan, Donegal, May 3-6; Opera House, Cork, May 9-13
