27 July 2007: Molière, Dom Juan (or Le Festin de Pierre)
27 July 2007: Molière, Dom Juan (or Le Festin de Pierre)
Old Deerfield Productions, performing at Deerfield Academy. World premiere of Virginia Scott’s translation. Directed and produced by Linda McInerney
A fine, spirited production of a sparkling new translation by Virginia Scott, emerita of the University of Massachusetts Theater Department and author of the recent (2000) biography of the playwright. Everything about this production is intelligent, exact, and full of the essential style of a Molière original. Of course, the play is Molière at his incisive and most reflective best.
Molière’s characters are unmistakably cut from whole cloth. There is nothing in the least compromised or second-hand about them, despite the long lineage of Commedia dell’Arte that stands transparently behind them and is reflected most directly in the character of Don Juan’s faithful servant Sganarelle, who complains at one point about the “vile servitude” that keeps him in thrall to the Don’s evil ways, as unwilling facilitator of his sexual exploits and constant interlocutor, the homme moyen sensuel through whose eyes we are allowed to see and judge, and yet unfailingly enjoy, his master. The audience is encouraged to be deeply involved in the action of the play, very close to it as they are in this 250-seat three-quarter round (or square, to be exact) black box of a performance space. They are delighted so to be caught up in the process through which the Don, who has discovered that rank, unabashed hypocrisy is the true vade mecum of life, plays whatever character he needs to play to obtain the woman or other object he desires, but simultaneously proceeds unerringly toward the violent, engulfing end that they know comprises his just deserts.
Long before writing this play, Molière had adapted and perfected his notion of dramatic character, which is based on a full, absolute self-assertiveness that can, for the moment, stop the action in its tracks while the character says what he has to say, warms to his theme, and expresses himself with full candor and the utmost frankness, apparently heedless of what the other, opposing character might think or feel and, when at last it is his turn, venture to reply. Indeed, the assertion seems so unanswerable that it seems impossible that the opposing character might be able to come up with any rejoinder at all. And yet he does, he does, and his reply is just as fully assertive, and in addition wields such contradictory force that the two characters are back on level ground, ready to repeat the effort once again.
An especially compelling example of this rhetorical formula (it really is that) occurs in the appearance in Act II of Don Juan’s father, Don Luis, an old, bearded man, somewhat unsteady on his feet, who simply walks in, unbidden, and calmly, almost as if in despair, delivers the most consummate diatribe against his son and his notorious evil exploits. Having delivered this monumental tirade, he does not wait for an answ