Tartuffe: Fresh heresy

Hypocrites hey. We see them everywhere.

Nowadays, mostly in the political sphere, for that is where power sits. Where we observe people standing behind lecterns or before banners emblazoned with symbols of integrity and courage and fortitude, or of a sun ever-rising upon fields of fertile colour and water blue as imagination, promising all we perceive to be good in this world; jobs, land, security, education: hope.

Only to discover that when they said ‘we’, they really meant ‘me’. An upside-down dyslexic lisp affecting many who gain stature from a cross.

Today’s elevating cross lies on its side, on a ballot paper, but when Molière wrote The Hypocrite, better known as Tartuffe, some 350 years ago, the cross stood upright and its promise of salvation was used by some to attain wealth and influence.

We now hand out the sideways crosses rather than having the upright one imposed on us, but hypocrisy remains a common vice, and it is that which Molière exposes. An exposure that had the church successfully petitioning King Louis XIV to censor the play. Not dissimilar to holders of the little x petitioning our now democratic institutions to censor Brett Murray’s The Spear exhibition. Or Zapiro cartoons.

Viva art that exposes the free-swinging genitals of powermongers everywhere. Viva!

The church has lost its power since the 17th Century, but Sylvaine Strike’s direction keeps Molière’s punch, enabling this play to arc across the centuries. The control and sensitivity of her grip brings the characters to the fore where in lesser hands they could be lost in a redundant landscape to leave us with a reproduction of an old classic rather than breathing new life into a timeless tale.

Eschewing notions of ‘reimagining’ or ‘recontextualising’, which have been the death knell for innumerable ‘updated’ versions of Shakespeare in particular, Strike focuses on the art of performance, trusting Molière to hold his own. Arguably her most inspired decision is to highlight the biting comedy of the text’s form of wonderfully translated rhyming couplets by heightening physical performance. She is a physical theatre acolyte after all, and drawing on the traditions of the Jaques LeCoq school, in this rendition gestures become exaggerated to the point the performance approaches a comic ballet. A dance of gestures in which words and movement are synthesised.

Neil McCarthy as wealthy patriarch Orgon and Craig Morris as the hypocrite Tartuffe whose pretentious piety inveigles him into the household, are the principal figures around which all revolves. Ludicrously long-legged McCarthy leans precariously in swoons of affection and misplaced loyalty for the malignant Tartuffe, who Morris plays in floor-scraping swoops and prostrations. What a delight to see Morris enter as Tartuffe, a role that suits him like a cilice around the thigh of a penitent Jesuit on Ash Wednesday; his malevolent simian physicality and low centre of gravity foil to McCarthy’s precarious list, which in itself provides a visual cue to the downfall his folly brings.

Not that the roles of Orgon’s sister (brother in the original) by Camilla Waldman, and Khutjo Green as the matriarch, and Orgon’s daughter and son played by Adrian Alper and Vuyelwa Maluleke, and Anele Situlweni as Orgon’s daughter’s suitor, and especially Vanessa Cooke as Dorine the servant, are in any way minor. Most of them have more stage time than McCarthy and Morris, with Cooke and Green, along with Waldman, radiating presence; Cooke sniping at her master’s foolishness with well-aimed barbs and asides garnered from the pragmatism of her station while Waldman (cross-dressed in the most wonderful pastels) vainly provides logical and philosophical counsel as she appeals to absent reason.

Green, more silent, has the better measure of her man and puts her wiles to more practical use.

Alper and Maluleke are also superbly cast, Situlweni too, although him we see the least, other than William Harding’s cameos.

All is played upon a terrace flanked by billowing pink organza reminiscent of a mediterranean villa, a fleur de lis hovering over the centrally-placed French door serving as entrance and exit into the house being desecrated by the false piety of the play’s namesake. This design by Sasha Ehlers and Chen Nakar creates a stage upon the stage, and combined with Nakar’s costuming, provides an air more Great Gatsby than Louis XIV, but other than causing momentary self-doubt as to what era Molièr lived in, it worked magnificently. It was a good in-between: not quite modernised, but not a period piece either.

It would be remiss not to congratulate Oliver Hauser on his lighting, which illuminated crucial moments delicately without pre-empting the plot.

Strike, who has a reputation of being exacting, but ultimately rewarding to work with, brings out the best in all the players, her discipline wielded to weave a visionary magic that leaves actors and crew with the ultimately satisfying feeling of having achieved more than they realised was possible.

It is a touch so deftly definitive that without so much as a nod or even a glance, the play leads on to consideration of the less overt of modern-day hypocrisies. That hairshirts can still be a thing (my black pain) and self-flagellation a useful tool (my white ignominy) in the ever-present struggle for power and prestige.

Or is this too fresh a heresy?

Whatever! Strike proves again that artistry is more thought-provoking than proselytizing.

Tartuffe is on at the Baxter Flipside until 29 April before moving up to Johannesburg. Information and bookings here.

—Steve Kretzmann