Photo credit: Cast of A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training's The Discreet Charm of Monsieur Jourdain [http://www.amrep.org/iatt/instperf.html]
Performance date: Saturday, September 6. No remaining performances.
As a theatre educator by trade, it seems fitting that my first blog review in Boston this season is a student production. This intensive two-year acting and dramaturgy training program has a long pedigree at Harvard and a decade ago a partnership with the Moscow Art Theatre was added into the mix. These fortunate students spend a three month residency in Moscow, where this current production--an adaptation of Moliere's The Bourgeois Gentleman--had its first run.
I thoroughly enjoyed this 100 minute show, bursting with youthful talent and energy and reminding me yet again why Moliere is up there with Shakespeare as one of the greats of all time. This production, directed by Dmitry Troyanovsky (a graduate of the program himself), is set in swinging Paris of the 1960's and is spiced up with dance routines to French pop music and lots of exuberant physicality. Staged in the simplest way in a black box space with one moving wall, the focus is on the parade of characters, most of whom wish to both profit from and make a fool of Monsieur Jourdain. He is a wealthy businessman, a nouveau riche son of a shopkeeper, who wants nothing more than to make it into the noble class. So, he has dance, music and fitness coaches, tutors, philosophers and clothiers trooping into his home in an endless parade, ridiculing his naive pretensions and laughing behind his back as they collect their pay. His long-suffering wife, daughter Lucile and household maid Nicole conspire to marry the daughter to her true love, but this backfires as the boyfriend Cleonte is no nobleman himself. This sets up a grand climactic con by the young lover and his friend that finally may knock some small amount of sense into the pompous (if lovable and harmless) Jourdain.
The production features strong performances from the whole company, who seem to be having a pretty good time with it all and has achieved an enviable ensemble feel...no doubt through lots of training and hard work. Standouts for me were Jim Senti in the title role, bringing a sweet clownlike affability to Jourdain, Kaaron Briscoe and Shelia Carrasco as Madame Jourdain and the daughter Lucile, both of whom found the core qualities of their characters and played them with great consistency, Emily Alpren as the sexy and world-weary maid Nicole and Renzo Ampuero and Josh Stamell as Cleonte and his friend (suitor to Nicole) Covielle, whose physicality and pseudo-revolutionary bravado were spot on.
Costumes were lots of fun...plenty of bright graphic prints and miniskirts for the girls and the appropriate ridiculous ensembles for Jourdain. Things go really over the top when Jourdain believes he is marrying-off Lucile to a Turkish prince (Cleonte in disguise) and the parodying of Turkish language and culture is intentionally squirm-inducing. But the final moments of the play, when Jourdain realizes what a dupe he has been and reunites with his family, finally giving his blessing to the young lovers, are very moving. Senti looks the audience in the eyes as if to remind us of our complicity in witnessing his buffoonery, and then seems to forgive us, as well as himself.
No wonder the court of Louis XIV loved it; what fun for the aristocracy to laugh at the upstart bourgeoisie from their unassailable positions of power (until 1789, that is!)
