It’s an interesting feeling, and it’s not always welcome when play spreads over the centuries and stabs you in your throat. this is”Don Juan”Molière’s 1665 tragicomedy Ashritata’s gender-swapped work Bard’s Summer Scape Festival..
Don Juan (Amelia Workman), Libertine’s extraordinary, finally reformed. Or is she there? After all, her devotion is just a pose. “The best role you can play in today’s world is the role of a morally upright person,” Dom Huang told her long-suffering malicious servant Suganarel (Zuzanna Shadkowski). I will explain. “The hypocrite profession has a myriad of perks.”
Her cynical claim speaks loudly about today’s politics. Wait a second. becomes terrible. This same speech is rarely the Internet trolling (“The hypocrites create a cabal of the same idea. When you attack, everything turns you on”) and the so-called cancel culture cancels those in power (” “They bow, sigh, and roll their eyes, and everyone forgives them.”) Such lines may suggest familiar interpolation by the authors of this new translation, Gideon Lester and Sylvan Guyot, artistic directors of Bird’s Fisher Center. But no, they are faithful representations of the original 17th century. The language has hardly been updated.
Great playwrights often have themes that come back over and over again. Molière is hypocrisy. This should allow free-thinker Dom fans to spend most of their play, abandoning social practices as casually as you and I dodge the hero Kleenex. Or like this work, a heroine. Indeed, Domfan remains a seducer. But a woman she is doing what she wants to do with her body? Sounds good!
The reality of Dom fans is more complicated — for both Moliere and Tata. Suganarel describes his boss as follows: “The greatest villain who has walked the earth, anger, dogs, demons, mice, heaven and hell, werewolves, etc.” I don’t think this is so great.
“Dom Juan” asks perennial questions about what an individual owes to the community and what she owes to herself. As fascinating as seeing women resist conquest, we are now years away from the #girlboss slogan. In other words, the notion of freedom in the absence of ethics and solidarity has lost its sparkle. And a particular lesson in the pandemic was how easy it was to use freedom as a weapon, and how it could reduce the freedom of others.
Tata’s busy, restless production brings these complications, but among sock puppets, rock bands, swordsmanship, lace cuffs, haze, and some very cool visual and acoustic effects. May forget. (Afsoon Pajoufar designed the set with lighting by Cha See, video design by Lisa Renkel, and sound design by Chad Raines.) The show curtains (tapestry of the idyllic scene) seemed to shrink and burn. When I laughed out loud. How fun! But for a long time along the way, the play doesn’t go out of breath anywhere, and the joy subsides before the resurrection of Dom Fan arrives.
Lester and Guyot respect Moliere’s original text, so they rarely feel that the gender swap is complete. In Moliere’s day, women would not have been able to behave this way. She could hardly behave this way now. Still, the role of the swashback ring remains the showcase of Workman, an actress of both Swagger and Steel. Her Domfan is groovy and violent, but she’s already a half-figure because she’s also an Adamantine and hasn’t been moved by others. Her support cast isn’t necessarily the same as her, but Jordan Bellow offers a nice physical comedy as Domfan’s abandoned husbands Elber and Sadkowski’s Suganarel have a wonderful moment out of control. To do.
Despite its decoration and temptation, the play is bitter at its center. If you invest too deeply in the liberation of Domfan and even her punishment, the consequences will be bad. The only option is not to worry — instead, lose yourself with the joy of production. It’s not a special chore in a sunny afternoon.
Otherwise, you may be worried about the visionary morals of the play that Suganarel spoke of. “It is terrible to have power and an evil soul.”
Don Juan
Until July 17th at Fisher Center LUMA Theater. fishercenter.bard.edu.. Execution time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
