ARTS . Editors Letter

Out of Gas


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Published: Sep 21, 2006

When it comes to humor, I'm more of an Oscar Wilde guy than a pie-in-your-face guy. Still, I can enjoy a good fart joke as much as the next frat boy. But it has to be a good fart joke.

Molière's The Imaginary Invalid provides plenty of 'em (at least it does in James Magruder's saucy adaptation). The doctor jokes are even better. And they are embedded in a clever comic plot. Argan, who is both hypochondriacal and cheap, wants to marry off his lovely daughter, Angelique, to a medical student — thus providing him with unlimited free consultations. (Argan doesn't see much sense in marriage; he's hitched himself to a gold-digging Beline, who wants Angelique out of the picture entirely.) For her part, Angelique is smitten with Cléante. Let the games begin.

These games are among the most raucous in Molière. Imaginary Invalid in some ways is a throwback to earlier comedy, where verbal jests give way to bawdier physical routines.

At People's Light, director Lillian Groag takes this strategy and runs with it. From the first moments, underscored by Fucik's "Entrance of the Gladiators," we know we're in for the broadest of comic modes.

It's an idea that might have worked with Zero Mostel and Lucille Ball (or Jack Black and Megan Mullally, these days) — expert vaudevillians with highly developed lazzi (as they were called in classical theater — to you and me, it's good old-fashioned shtick).

But it's a bad fit for the People's Light. Apart from a couple of good supporting turns, the cast look like naturalistic, serious actors trying out an uncomfortable new style. Everybody tries, really tries. But it needs bolder, more confident, and — yes — funnier playing.

Also better direction from Groag, whose staging is flat and unimaginative. Her farcical gags are tired. And if we're going to have vulgarity, let's have vulgarity. Certainly Argan, a grimy old man obsessed with shit, should be wearing something other than an immaculate cream-colored dressing gown. Things come together for a good finale, but it's too little, too late.

Even the farts should be funnier.

The Imaginary Invalid

Through Oct. 22, People's Light and Theatre, 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, 610-644-3500