Tartuffe
By Moliere
Translated by Christopher Hampton
Directed by Barrie Kosky
The Sydney Theatre Company with Louise Fox and Jacek Koman
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Review by Brendan Doyle
When Moliere's Tartuffe or The Hypocrite was first staged in the 1660s, the Archbishop of Paris and many other notables denounced the play, called Moliere a devil and managed to have the theatre closed. It was too close to the bone, making fun of religious hypocrites.
Kosky's version, set in an Aussie family and liberally adorned with four-letter words, doesn't even manage to cause mild offence to the North Shore subscribers who have flocked to see what the enfante terrible has come up with this time.
The reason Moliere's play was offensive to the rich and powerful of the time was because, as Moliere himself wrote, "hypocrites don't mind being portrayed as nasty, but not ridiculous". Tartuffe tells the story of Orgon, a well-off, respectable family man who has fallen under the influence of Tartuffe, a religious bigot and con man who has convinced Orgon that he holds the key to his salvation.
Orgon even offers him his daughter, asks him to move in with them and hands Tartuffe the title deeds to his property. Why? Because Tartuffe represents to the susceptible Orgon an ideal of renunciation, piety and self-imposed poverty that he finds irresistible.
Although his son, daughter and servant see Tartuffe for what he is, Orgon makes him his guru. Like many a recent holy man, Tartuffe also has exaggerated sexual needs and lusts after Orgon's wife, Elmire. He exploits Orgon's trust mercilessly and nearly destroys him and his family in the process. But, this being a comedy, an emissary from the king arrives at the last moment and arrests Tartuffe for fraud.
If Moliere believed that the high purpose of comedy was "to correct men's vices", it's hard to see what Kosky's version of the play seeks to do. It opens with an Australian family's Christmas preparations. The son is shooting up under the Christmas tree. A bit later they all sit down to some McDonalds.
Although Christopher Hampton's translation is quite true to the spirit of the original, Kosky's addition of garish set, deafeningly loud music, vomiting into turkey carcasses and throwing food around the stage don't really make the comedy any funnier. In fact, the production doesn't so much raise laughs as cause embarrassment, the kind you feel when someone else's spoiled brat starts behaving badly.
The best moments are when the humour, irony and farce of the original emerge, as in the character of the servant Dorine, played by Louise Fox, or the sleazy, menacing Tartuffe as played by Jacek Koman.
A few years ago, I saw a small-scale production of Moliere's The Bourgeois Gentleman that had an Australian flavour but, because it relied on the comedy of the play itself rather than unnecessary decoration, was infinitely more amusing than Kosky's hyperactive nonsense.
If you still want to see this show, you'll be up for around $50, never mind the fact that you are already subsidising the Sydney Theatre Company to the tune of about $1 million a year!