Bob Verini – Arts In LA
For Tartuffe to achieve maximum comic, emotional, and thematic impact, the privileged Orgon must serve as the central figure. He must be a misanthrope (a type not unknown to Molière) well and truly disgusted with the world’s vanities as typified by his frivolous, feckless family. Orgon’s profound despair explains his retreat into excessive piety, and it’s what renders him vulnerable to the spell of a seemingly holy visionary…
The current, handsome revival at A Noise Within, directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, captures the fripperies of the household well enough (in large measure thanks to Angela Balogh Calin’s divinely over-the-top costumes). And in Freddy Douglas’s Tartuffe they have an eminently sinister Rasputin, who teeters tantalizingly on the edge between saint and charlatan. But with an Orgon (Geoff Elliott) tippy-toeing around in a huge Groucho mustache and metallic eyeglasses that might’ve belonged to Rue McClanahan during the Golden Girls years, and farcical biz that keeps sending the characters tripping over each other, the guts are excised from the drama, pure and simple. Read more…
Now running through May 24.