Tartuffe

Following on from his first successful venture into Moliere’s labyrinthine back catalogue of comedy with The School For Wives, playwright Justin Fleming has delivered the goods again.

As his second offering for Bell Shakespeare, Tartuffe has been adapted with an Australian audience in mind and is similarly written in the 12-syllable rhyming couplets Fleming utilised with his first Moliere endeavour. Making use of the Francophile’s farcical comedic pratfalls and flawed yet completely lovable characters, Fleming along with director Peter Evans have delivered an ode to the 17th century with a delightfully hilarious modern twist. Leon Ford plays the masterfully manipulative Tartuffe, who successfully convinces the great but gullible Orgon (Sean O’Shea) that he has wisdom beyond reproach.

Tartuffe thus manages to firmly embed himself within the family home before attempting to steal it along with Orgon’s wealth and wife. Not all are convinced by Tartuffe’s scheming however, and the vagrant suffers from his own brand of manipulation when the family retaliates with a vengeance. The stage is set with spectacularly oversized furniture items, placed haphazardly across the stage as if the farcical nonsense was set in a toy box filled with puppets. Indeed, assistant director Susanna Dowling confirms that Tartuffe is a play beset by inherently “childlike characters in a childlike situation” and it is this foolishness that will have audiences laughing unreservedly and coming back to Bell Shakespeare for the next uproarious installment.