The Miser

Justin Fleming takes Molière’s satire/farce and makes it even more farcical; he up-dates its language to a distinctly Australian idiom with contemporary references and clunky-but-irresistible gags, even while retaining the convoluted plot of the original – and the occasional rhyming couplet.  Director Peter Evans and a great cast - who all turn out to be very able comedians – invest all their skill in Mr Fleming’s take and run with it all the way.  The result is a hugely entertaining romp.

The Miser Harpagon (John Bell) still takes avarice to new depths of greed and paranoia and hides his fortune in a box in the garden.  Cléante (Damien Strouthos), his son, still wants to elope with his beloved Marianne (Elizabeth Nabben), but he’s desperate for money and there seems to be only one money-lender in town.  One change from the original that may seem radical – or very ‘modern’ – is that Harpagon’s male servant Valère is here female (played by a spirited Jessica Tovey) which makes the love and intended marriage between Valère and the Miser’s daughter Élise (ably played as sweet but none-too-bright by Harriet Gordon-Anderson) very modern indeed, but none of the other characters, including Harpagon, blinks an eye at this and the show glides effortlessly over this and on.  Some ‘innovations’, however, that may seem boldly original – such as ‘asides’ to the audience being heard by other characters – are already there in Molière’s text, another element of his satire.

Sean O’Shea, a natural clown, is Cléante’s servant La Flèche, a gangly fellow whose rapport with the audience milks laughter from his every appearance – but he can also bring a kind of foppish dignity to Signor Anselm, the noble and rich gentleman ex machina – so to speak – necessary to resolve the plot.  Mr O’Shea and Michelle Doake, as Frosine, the lascivious matchmaker, come close to stealing the show from Mr Bell – Ms Doake too playing to the audience, even to the extent of arranging a date (in dumb show) with an attractive fellow down front.  Jamie Oxenbould, with a white poker face like a silent movie stooge, is Master Jacques, Harpagon’s coachman and cook – Harpagon being too stingy to employ two servants – who has to ask if he is addressed as coachman or as cook – and then to dress accordingly. 

But it is John Bell, of course, who draws the eye and dominates the stage – conveying an aged, stooped and slit-eyed mean decrepitude vitalised by greed and lust, sharply alert to any threat to his riches or the necessity to spend a single sou.

True to the traditions of farce, designer Anna Tregloan provides a row of doors for entrances, exits, entrances and exits at once, and a great deal of noisy slamming.  Her costumes seem to be the result of uninhibited imagination: of no particular period, arbitrary but suggestive – for instance, Cléante’s velvet brocaded coat, green wig and bare feet – or, by contrast, Valère’s prim, plain blouse and skirt.  Matt Cox’s lighting is the bright revealing light that comedy requires, only momentarily dimming and isolating old Harpagon – to remind us that there is a serious undertone to all this frenetic frivolity.

It’s true that at times, Mr Fleming is perhaps too faithful in that every opportunity for a long explanatory speech is taken and some small trims might have sped things along even more, but that aside, if one steps back a moment, one sees with this Miser a very risky enterprise. 

This is a show that could, in lesser hands, have fallen flat on its face - the anachronistic ‘up-dating’ and insertion of current colloquialisms in the dialogue, the deliberate over-acting, mugging and signalling to the audience, and the ridiculous costumes all could so easily have suggested a misjudged, try-hard even amateurish production desperate for laughs.  But instead this Miser in Peter Evans’ hands is a great success: it moves at a breathless clip in which the energy never flags, in which the cast’s commitment to their cartoonish characters is total and their comic timing impeccable.  It is true to the spirit, if not the letter, of Molière and so the ending has a final sting, that is only appropriate to his overall intention.  The Bell Shakespeare Company’s updated or modern dress productions can sometimes seem a bit forced or naff in straining after ‘relevance’ and ‘accessibility’. Not this show: it’s a cracker. 

Michael Brindley