Despite what it might sound like, “Tartuffe” is not the name of a French custard-filled pastry and the Ivy Substation has not been remade as a Parisian café. Yet what we have here is nevertheless a wicked confection as one of France’s greatest playwrights, Molière, gets the Actor’s Gang treatment in a revival of their hugely successful 2005 production.

[img]1149|left|P. Adam Walsh as Orgon||no_popup[/img]Emphasizing the Gang’s devotion to Commedia del’Arte, their staging of Tartuffe demonstrates their love of the form, which is conveniently suited to the Gang’s diminished operating funds. Much like the kid who evokes a superhero from a beach towel or medieval architecture from a pile of pillows, the Gang creates an entire self-contained world on a stage populated by simple scenery and a smattering of props. Success comes from David Ball’s refined contemporary-minded adaptation, Jon Kellam’s vivacious direction, and the cast – gussied in colourful costumes, facepaint, and occasionally masks – who don’t simply inhabit the stage but burst forth upon it in a rip-snorting display of physicality. You could point to P. Adam Walsh’s delightful hamming as Orgon – a man who coddles the seemingly pious Tartuffe at the expense of his family – as the production’s signature performance, with good reason. Walsh clowns and mugs with the exaggerated cartooning commedia del’arte is known for, extracting both laughs and pathos from a character who is ridiculous in his human failings and noble in his regrets…the very definition of sublime. Yet comes along Hannah Chados playing Marianne, Orgon’s daughter ,with side-splitting hysterics to steal the scene. And if that’s not enough, Jeremie Lonka makes the grandest entrance of all as Marianne’s fiancé, Valère, who bounds on the stage like the spawn of a rock star and a matador, going so far over the top that we question, while rolling on the floor, whether there ever was a top to begin with. It’s madcap, it’s silly, it’s unabashedly fun, and it demonstrates the Gang’s singular ability to celebrate the theatrical arts while smuggling social commentary into the audience’s heads.

But what’s that? Social commentary? Mais oui! Molière lampooned religious hypocrisy, enough to find the play opposed by the Roman Catholic Church and other religious moralists after it premiered in 1664. Even with a few modifications to secularize the play, Tartuffe remained controversial. Were it not for royal patronage by King Louis XIV (despite censoring the play), Molière himself might have been banned. Nowadays, the failure of religious hypocrisy to surprise is regrettable, but no reflection on the acuteness of Molière’s barbs. Nor is the play’s critique untimely or irrelevant. How often do we see piety, like Tartuffe himself, churn out imperious moral judgments while bank and bedroom play host to the usual human failings of greed and lust? Hypocrisy and moral corruption may no longer surprise us, but the Actor’s Gang, serving as our theatrical conscience, is there to remind to us to be outraged. When we’re done laughing, that is.

“Tartuffe,” by Molière. Adapted by David Ball. Directed by Jon Kellam. Starring Pierre Adeli, Hannah Chodos, Christiane Georgi, Kathryn Carner, Adam Jefferis, Jeremie Loncka, Vanessa Mizzone, Mary Eileen O’Donnell, Steven M. Porter, Bob Turton, P. Adam Walsh and Sabra Williams. On stage at the Actor’s Gang in the Ivy Substation until Sunday, May 1. Visit www.theactorsgang.org

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