Wednesday last I attended a performance of Moliere's The Misanthrope. The production was staged by "A Noise Within" at the Harriet and Charles Luckman Fine Arts Complex located on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles. The June 21st performance was directed by Sabin Epstein and featured Mark Bramhall, Joel Swetow and Abby Craden in the primary roles of the iconoclastic Alceste, the diplomatic Philinte and feline Celimene.
I found the most remarkable element of this performance to be the spectacle, or visual components within the work. The featured costume work helped create two distinct ideals. Although this play was written in 1666 France, the clothing created an overall sense that the action was taking place in the twentieth century. Secondly, the costume changes, and lack thereof, set the foremost figure of Alceste apart from the other primary roles.
Firstly, the costumes melded different twentieth-century-era clothing styles to create an attractive and familiar look. The modern sex-kitten prototype was created via the replication of a 1950's era Celimene clad a la Marilyn Monroe replete with red haltered frock, red feathered hat, red pumps, shiny red lips and dripping rhinestones. Complimenting this stylized ideal, the 1940's strong man was recreated in the double-breasted dark suits of Philinte and Alceste. Philinte was a bit complicated (as was his character) with a combination of pinstripes, fedora, handkerchief and a boutonniere, whereas Alceste presented a simpler facade in a dark, solid-colored suite paired with a simple turtleneck and suspenders. The 1920's were present in the Gatsby-like outfit worn by suitor, Acaste, while his vaguely regal companion Clitandre was clad in vaguely twentieth-century dark suit and blue sash, worn jauntily to the side as one would imagine Prince Reiner wore to woo the yet-to-be-Princess Grace. Secondly, in the final scene, all the key players changed into seventeenth-century court costumes, complete with powdered faces and flowing wigs, whilst Alceste remained stalwartly in the same outfit. His lack of a costume change visually demonstrated his unwillingness to participate in the masquerade (ball) of the group dynamics.
On a positive note, I would like to say that the acting was impeccable - I was held enthralled and absorbed by the performance. But on a negative note, while on one level I enjoyed the uncomplicated visual cues the character's costumes offered - there was a sense that any subtlety one might have gained at simply observing the characters was lost - because their personalities were dished out on a (fashion) plate. Similarly, Richard Wilbur translated the play from the original French version into English. I would imagine that the original French version had a rhyming quality because his translation for this performance's speech patterns where heavily rhymed. Needless to say, something may have been lost in the translation, or I could have simply been caught up in the witty banter the rhyming helped create, but I found myself so caught up in how the characters were speaking, and what they looked like, that I could hardly remember what they said. So in short, the combination of the costumes and the speech patterns detracted from what I felt could have been a truly outstanding play.
The performance of Moliere's The Misanthrope was marked most profoundly by a bold use of the twentieth-century costumes to modernize a seventeenth-century work. The idealized costumes, as well as the lack of a costume change for the main character, too clearly defined the character's personalities. The actor's performances were first-rate, but the costumes, along with the rhyming banter, detracted from a sense of curiosity that compels an audience member to become enraptured in a play. While I enjoyed The Misanthrope very much, I felt disappointed in the lack of subtlety or depth.
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