Review: The Imaginary Invalid by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
The 85-seat house at the City Theatre was agreeably full on the opening Friday of Karen Sneed's staging of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid. A full house of attentive spectators is always a boost to the cast. Amusement is amplified and reactions build. The natural curiosity of the audience becomes rapport with actors and characters. Comedy, by provoking shared laughter, binds the members of each evening's audience indefinably, in a fashion that differs from night to night.
That positive crowd effect may have been linked to the fact that 16 actors inhabit this farce, portraying 31 characters. The City Theatre deserves to enjoy a setting similar to that initial "family and friends" effect for the upcoming three weekends of its run.
Effective stage comedies snare us with quirks and jokes, then elaborate and build the fun with absurdities and unexpected turns of plot. That's Molière's method here. Grumpy, stingy hypochondriac Argan bemoans his miseries and the pile of bills from physicians and pharmacists for hair-raising and trouser-dropping treatments, directed mostly via the opening of his lower colon. (During our years abroad we discovered to our discomfort that contemporary French medicine retains an affection for just that therapeutic channel.)
Argan initiallly rails out loud to himself and at his irreverent serving girl Toinette. We then see him exercise his arbitrary petty tyrannies over his marriageable daughter Angélique, at the same time that he's a witless dupe of his gold-digging young wife and a procession of quacks. Just about everyone onstage is intriguing against everyone else, and we the audience have the cheerful feeling that we're at least two steps ahead of each of them.
Director Sneed presents a deft combination of theatrical styles. Richard Craig plays Argan as a straightforward self-absorbed grump, while Suzanne Balling as servant Toinette use a more elaborate, exaggerated style and costuming recalling simultaneously the "tricky slave" of Roman comedy and the stock figures of the Commedia dall'Arte. Balling's poses, paintings and broad winks to the audience and to other characters signal to us that she's the only one we should trust.
Alexandra Russo as the ingénue daughter Angélique and Cason Longley as her suitor Cléanthe play their roles in demure and restrained fashion, respectively, as he gains entrance to the household by pretending to be a music instructor. The absurdity of his costume -- a light-colored frock coat with velvet musical notes sewed upon it -- initially led me to expect greater shenanigans, but the "impromptu opera" they stage for Daddy Argan, confessing their loves as mythic shepherd and shepherdess, is not played particularly for laughs. They're the young and earnest ones, not yet deformed by their elders.
Rip-roaring business and performances elsewhere balance them out.
As curtain-raisers and transition pieces, Sneed provides clowning, dance and pastoral song. Round and exuberant Robert Frazier as jester-clad Polichinelle serenades Kate Clark his shy mistress Zerbinetta. A bevy of harem girls amuse Argan and sing mockeries of medicine, and a cadre of chanting physicians in academic regalia induct him into the medical fellowship. In that wild climax there's even a blond-wigged Hilary Clinton to excoriate the health care professions.
Molière's own characters as successively introduced in the story are emphatic cameos: Mick D'Arcy and Brian Brown as Diafoirus father and son, Kirk Kelso as Argan's brother Béralde, Mario Silva in several vivid small roles including a funny turn as Argan's second daughter the spoiled little Louise, and Frazier as an apothecary with an alarmingly large and menacing device for the application of enemas. Scott Friedman's a fine man with wigs and accents, as he proves as the duplicitous notary Bonnefoi ("Good Faith") and as the autocratic and much-feared chief physician Dr. Purgon.
The company bases the text on the translations of Richard Wilbur and James Magruder with additional music, contemporary additions and references by Sneed and by musical director Kyle Myers.
The Imaginary Invalid is playful, highly exaggerated and good fun. You won't find any solutions to current health care issues, other than the truism that laughter is the best medicine, but you will certainly lose your worries about them during the lively two hours of this performance.
Review by Robert Faires for the Austin Chronicle, August 11
EXTRA
Click to view program for The Imaginary Invalid at City Theatre Austin
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The Imaginary Invalid
by Molière, adapted by David Chambers
City Theatre Company
