{"id":259,"date":"2021-05-05T19:20:11","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T19:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/23\/?p=259"},"modified":"2021-11-21T20:55:21","modified_gmt":"2021-11-21T20:55:21","slug":"who-are-the-hypocrites-moliere-in-the-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/23\/who-are-the-hypocrites-moliere-in-the-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Are the Hypocrites? Moli\u00e8re in the Know"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aikaterini Delikonstantinidou<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cabal of Hypocrites<\/em> or Moli\u00e8re<\/em>, written by Mikhail Bulgakov. Produced by the National Theatre of Greece, Main Stage, 6 February 2021. Directed by Stathis Livathinos; translated by Leonidas Karantzas; set and costumes by Eleni Manilopoulou; music by Theodore Abazis; movement by Ageliki Stellatou; lighting by Alekos Anastasiou. Cast: Stamatis Fasoulis as Jean Baptiste de Moli\u00e8re, <\/em>Nikos Kardonis as Louis XIV, Amalia Tsekoura as Armande B\u00e9jart, Maria Savvidou as Madeleine B\u00e9jart, Michalis Valasoglou as the Archbishop.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a special place reserved in the theatre for people whose life and works, though grounded in more or less verifiable fact, have slid into the realm of myth. Jean Baptiste de Moli\u00e8re (born Poquelin) is one such case. As a liminal mythic figure, and thus as a cultural text of distributed authorship, Moli\u00e8re has been received in ways that betray more about the context in which\u2014and the intentions from which\u2014reception springs than about the primary mythical material itself, here Moli\u00e8re the man. As a scholar of myth reception would put it, Mikhail Bulgakov (1891\u20131940), the Russian writer (and former medical doctor), received Moli\u00e8re as a myth composed of episodes nodding to the past by means of which he would speak to his own present, early-twentieth century Soviet Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cabal of Hypocrites<\/em>, renamed Moli\u00e8re<\/em> at the demand of Soviet censorship that strove to blunt every critical edge of the play, is Bulgakov\u2019s take on the great comic dramatist-as-myth. It dramatizes Moli\u00e8re\u2019s fall from the King\u2019s grace and his last days as a persona non grata<\/em>, after a long persecution mainly by agents of the Church; a fall that hinges on the accusation that he knowingly married his own daughter, Armande B\u00e9jart (in actuality, a historical rumor woven into Moli\u00e8re\u2019s biography). The play is not a romantic drama, contrary to what Bulgakov suggested in an interview he gave a few days before the play was cancelled after only seven performances at the end of February 1936. It is not a historical chronicle either. And to his censors\u2019 bitter disappointment, it definitely does not subscribe to the ideological and aesthetic tenets of socialist realism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is rather a parable of satirical intent, with expressionist streams running deep through it. Who the targets of the satire are, however, is not clear. This generates a kind of creative ambiguity that may well be the source of the play\u2019s continuing appeal for theatre directors who aspire to project and criticize their own nemeses on the fictional screen of the play\u2019s tyrants, representatives of the State (King Louis XIV and his courtiers) and the Church (the Archbishop of Paris and his acolytes). This is also the reason why regime loyalists among the USSR\u2019s intelligentsia trashed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From the final act of the 2021 production of The Cabal of Hypocrites<\/em> or Moli\u00e8re<\/em>. Photo: Elina Giounanli\/nophoto.gr<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For the latter and for the censors, the target is absolutism and the Soviet regime itself; for others, including some reviewers of the play\u2019s first Greek production in 2005 on the National Theatre\u2019s Experimental Stage, also directed by Stathis Livathinos, it is the above plus the willful depravity plaguing the theatre industry; for other critics, the meanness and ignorance of the masses of prigs and apologists of tyranny; and for others still, the random cruelty of those with the power (all sorts of it) to exercise authority (in every manifestation) over others. If I were to comment on the play as dramatic text, I would praise its fine language, balance of expressive means, generative thematic content, without a second thought. But I should not fail to recognize that what renders the play a feast of interpretation, the obscure objects of its satire, is also what shrouds its \u201cbeating heart,\u201d as it were, and makes it difficult to connect with. I do comprehend its immediate relevance, there is no doubt about this; but it interposes some sort of barrier to affective signification that precludes any concrete attachment between the drama and its recipients, us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the many tense encounters between Louis XIV (Nikos Kardonis) and Moli\u00e8re (Stamatis Fasoulis). Photo: Elina Giounanli\/nophoto.gr<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Not that this is necessarily the point. Detachment can be highly constructive, even in quasi or purely pedagogical ways, as theatre history has shown. And it seems that Livathinos, who returns to Moli\u00e8re<\/em> more than fifteen years after its first Greek production, plays into that notion. Yet the foregoing quality of the play, coupled with the multidimensional distance the screen imposes when you watch the performance via online streaming, renders the effort to invest mentally, affectively and viscerally in the performance demanding, to the point of becoming wearing. And this despite Livathinos\u2019 generally dexterous directorial sweep, the cast\u2019s well executed performances, and the masterly stagecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, I should note that praise befits Eleni Manilopoulou\u2019s set and costumes, as well as Theodore Abazis\u2019 music, which together compose the sensory beacon and emotive compass of the experience. Special praise is also due to Nikos Kardonis\u2019 performance as Louis XIV and Michalis Valasoglou\u2019s as the Archbishop; the former nuanced to the point of poesy, the latter awe-inspiring. Still, all these assets are not enough to keep the impression that the onstage field of forces produces from waning considerably in the last third of the performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Stamatis Fasoulis as Moli\u00e8re. Photo: Elina Giounanli\/nophoto.gr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To be honest, I am not sure if this \u201cdimming effect\u201d should be attributed to the mediation of the screen, the dramatic text that becomes somewhat rambling near the end, the faltering of rhythm in the mise-en-sc\u00e8ne <\/em>of the final act, or to all three of these factors. Whatever the causal agents, the result is that by the final scene and Moli\u00e8re\u2019s death, besides a sense of ennui that has set in, there is also the awkward realization that the performance has inspired no sympathy whatsoever for any of its major or minor characters, not even for Moli\u00e8re, or, rather, especially not for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I certainly cannot say whether Livathinos intended for Stamatis Fasoulis to embody a Moli\u00e8re who is little more than a moody and dissolute diva, a duplicitous and opportunist toady, a man lacking a moral center or discernible gravitas whose behavior borders on dementia. If he did, I was left wondering why. Bulgakov humanized his protagonist: he did not make a caricature of him. His text brings Moli\u00e8re from the heights of genius down to the level of the common human; and it intimates, in subtle but unmistakable ways, that it is precisely this commonness, all that is not great in humanity, that brought him down; hence the work\u2019s tragic import, what makes it a \u201cclassic.\u201d In the performance I watched, Moli\u00e8re begins as all too human, but by the end he is brought much lower than that, and rather gratuitously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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