Tartuffe by Moliere

Tartuffe by Moliere

Constance Congdon's witty verse adaptation of Moliere's timeless classic, in which a religious conman infiltrates the household of a gullible man and his exasperated family, has lent itself to productions set in modern-day Texas, New Orleans, and even The Sopranos' New Jersey. Constance Congdon slips into Moliere's tricky shoes and the fit is Cinderella-perfect. Congdon's quicksilver wit and breathless urgency coax the dark heart of Tartuffe into glowing with a twenty-first-century heat. -John Guare The] over-the-top setting for the Two River Theater production of TARTUFE is a Texas McMansion decorated like a Disney theme park. A spiraling two-story staircase, its iron railing featuring a recurring motif of a lone star nestled in a spur, dominates the space. The sitting area below, done in high Louis-the-Something, has a damask sofa with silver Texas Ranger badges adorning its skirt and pony skin pillows propped in its corners. Looming above the stairwell, a huge cross, operated by remote control, awaits illumination. Eat your heart out, J. R. The director Jane Page has taken Constance Congdon's new rhymed version of Moliere's 1664 satire, based on a translation by Virginia Scott, and plopped it down in Texas (somewhere near a Neiman Marcus, as the shopping bags attest) circa 2006. The conceit works wonderfully, with each of the playwright's comically charged characters slipping naturally into twang and two-step . It all adds up to a fun-filled Texas-style branding, skewering and roasting of a villain everyone loves to hate. -Naomi Siegel, New York Times

Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in1622, began his career as an actor before becoming a playwright who specialized in satirizing the institutions and morals of his day. In 1658, his theater company settled in Paris in the Théâter du Petit-Bourbon. The object of fierce attack because of such masterpieces as Tartuffe and Don Juan, Molière nonetheless won the favor of the public. In 1665, his company became the King's Troupe, and the following year saw the staging of The Misanthrope, as well as The Doctor in Spite of Himself. In 1668, he produced his bitterly comic The Miser and, in the remaining years before his death, created such plays as The Would-Be Gentleman, The Mischievous Machinations of Scapin, and The Learned Women. In 1673, Molière collapsed onstage while performing his last play, The Imaginary Invalid, and died shortly thereafter.

Donald M. Frame was Moore Professor of French at Columbia University and an acclaimed scholar and translator of French literature. Among his notable works of translation are The Complete Essays of Montaigne, The Complete Works of Rabelais, and the Signet Classics Tartuffe & Other Plays and Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories.

Virginia Scott is Professor Emerita in the Department of Theater of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the author of Moliére: A Theatrical Life, The Commedia Dell'Arte in Paris, and Performance, Poetry and Politics on the Queen's Day: Catherine de Medici and Pierre de Ronsard at Fontainebleau (with Sara Sturm-Maddox).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780948275173
ISBN 10	0948275170
Title	Tartuffe
Author	Moliere
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Edinburgh University Press
Year published	1986-01-01
Number of pages	80
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable