Review: The Liar by Austin Playhouse
by David Glen Robinson
Playwright David Ives is surfing a crest of popularity in Austin and Texas, as his Venus in Fur closed its marvelous run two weeks ago at Austin Playhouse and continues to run in other Texas cities. Ives’ adaptation of The Liar has just opened at Austin Playhouse in Highland Mall, playing until March 9.
Ives seems to specialize in fastening on works of literature and historical theatre and adapting them to contemporary tastes. Venus in Fur was structured as a synopsis of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novella Venus in Furs, presented as a play within a play. With Pierre Corneille’s The Liar, the adaptation is more subtle. Ives’ part in it seems to be an English translation in iambic pentameter from the original French. That's an impressive feat in its own right, but the adaptation here seems limited to the change in language. Other than that, the work appears to be an archival copy of a shining French play from the era of Molière and Racine. Let research scholars search hard to identify the adaptive changes from its traditional schema. The play is satisfying simply for what it is in Austin Playhouse’s production under the direction of Don Toner.
Wikipedia notes that The Liar was written in 1643 and premiered in Paris in 1644. Pierre Corneille was a pillar of France’s 17thcentury theatrical golden age. He wrote comedies and tragedies, and was said to have been hypersensitive to criticism; more than once he fled Paris for his natal Rouen under the lash of unfavorable reviews. There's no record that reviews of The Liarsent him out of town, so probably not. But like any true French theatre person, he always returned to Paris, remaining there until the end of his life in 1684.
The Liar is full of period conventions and plot devices, including romantic entanglements, burning desire, alienation and redemption of friendships and loves, mysterious pasts revealed astoundingly at the end, enmity, revenge, violence, and more. A playwright could arrange all the elements on a Chinese menu and the play would write itself. Audiences would plow through it like a Chinese buffet, consuming it all and coming back for more (in about a half hour).
The Liar starts with one of the signature conventions of the time, the picaresque character. He is the commentator on the play, standing—when it pleases him—slightly out of frame of the story and commenting dismissively or mockingly on the characters, their desires, vain hopes and conceits. Who better to play this role in The Liar than Austin’s incomparable J. Ben Wolfe? As the character Cliton, he is a street-living day laborer with a mysterious past, worldly wise, who comments insightfully on passersby and theatergoers sitting in the audience. Later, he applies a method borrowed from the commedia dell’ arte when he steps downstage, out of a scene, and gives a very purposeful aside to the audience. He is the only character in the play to do so, although Dorante (Benjamin Summers) as the title character occasionally points out audience members in his set speeches and directly addresses the entire audience in the summary narration at the end.
Dorante, on his first day in Paris, engages Cliton as guide and manservant, and together they are off and running. Doranteimmediatelyfalls in love with the wrong woman and then tries to fix things with the bold strategy of lying his way out of everything. It eventually comes out that his type of mendacity is imaginative entertainment to relieve the prevailing ennui of the upper classes.
His most elaborate story actually reflects in detail a popular literary genre in 17th century France. Fantasy fiction then bore heavily on Elysian lands of bliss reached by pleasure barges and palanquins borne by naiads, cherubs, and other mythic creatures. Sensual banquets took place under garlanded baldachins, with music, chests of gemstones and gold, and fireworks. These are the kinds of evocative celestial scenes painted on the ceilings of basilicas in vertical perspective by Giambattista Tiepolo and other Baroque painters. Dorante was equal to the task of verbally limning these scenarios, but only to the effect of deepening his perils with women and jealous boyfriends and with a seeming obsession with pomegranates.
Director Toner's enlightened casting also extended to the female cast members. Hildreth England as Clarice and Lara Toner as Lucrece drove the plot with their knowing status as love objects,with the mission in life before marriage to flirt and torture mankind as thoroughly and cruelly as possible before surrendering to their hymeneal fates. Their hilariously daffy dialogues, especially in night scenes, propelled the story toward further mistaken identities and additional confusion.
Their movement kept the audience’s attention as well: They bounced around their private chambers as happy teenagers and promenaded serenely through street scenes in hoop skirts like blossoms floating on a still lake.
Claire Grasso played dual roles as the twin maidservants to Clarice and Lucrece, named Sabine and Isabelle. The twins had mirror-opposite personalities. Sabine, dour and taciturn, wanted to punish everyone and was seized with never-ending righteous wrath. Isabelle, of even greater evil, wanted to slutify everyone, and she succeeded with Cliton throughout the play. This subplot was necessary because Isabelle’s attentions clouded the vision of the otherwise sharp Cliton. He could have seen through many situations and kept his master out of trouble, but not with Isabelle in his mind and all over his body.
The costumes were simply brilliant. Oh, perhaps there could have been additional starched ruffs and rich brocades, but this is a quibble, and the collection as a whole was very close to a period that exalted the flamboyant. The Austin theatre community seems to be going through a time of high creativity in costume design, and Austin Playhouse costumers Buffy Manners and Diana Huckaby are in the thick of it. Another recent showcase of well-researched costuming magic was Jennifer Rose Davis's designs and work for the marionette puppets and actors in The Hidden Room’s Der Bestrafte Brudermord or The Fratricide, Punished.
Stephen Mercantel took an impressive turn as Philiste the Parisian fop. He simpered and strutted in a period costume that was Beyond Gay. Then unexpectedly he received a kiss from Sabine and fell to his knees quivering and panting like an overexcited dog in some libidinal surge. This was an echo, and a strikingly smart one, of Ives’ Venus in Fur at Austin Playhouse a few weeks ago (although Mr. Mercantel was not in that cast). Great credit goes to Mercantel and director Toner for a singular onstage moment worthy of praise and remembrance.
Ives’ disparate choices for play adaptations may or may not have thematic patterns. Certainly he writes brilliant dialogue that can be appreciated only by adults with some degree of discernment (no sitcom joke-writing for Mr. Ives). Ives also illuminates characters reluctant to deal with internal conflicts of identity or desire. Dragging those conflicts out into the light of day and the scrutiny of audiences is the stuff of a brilliant playwriting career.
This production of The Liar, a world-class comedy for adult audiences, is strongly recommended.
The Liar
by Pierre Corneille, adapted by David Ives
Austin Playhouse
