Abbey’s handsome Tartuffe tries far too hard to be funny

Theatre reviews

Tartuffe, as a production, focuses far too much on message over humour. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Tartuffe at then Abbey fails to take flight. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Tartuffe, as a production, focuses far too much on message over humour. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Tartuffe at then Abbey fails to take flight. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Tartuffe, as a production, focuses far too much on message over humour. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Emer O'Kelly

March 19 2023 02:30 AM

Tartuffe Abbey Theatre

Horse Play
Bestseller Café

A lot of work has gone into the Abbey’s production of Molière’s immortal comedy Tartuffe, staged in a new version by Frank McGuinness. Perhaps that’s what’s wrong: the audience shouldn’t be aware of the effort involved. And in this production, the effort is almost creaking.

It comes over as a concept conceived with the heavy-handed approach of someone concentrating on message over humour. The result is a leadenly unfunny first half.

The directorial approach seems to be reminding itself “this has to come over as very funny”. Except it doesn’t. Things do improve during the second half, although it all remains rather laboured.

McGuinness has rendered Molière’s viciously funny 17th century satire of religious hypocrisy into rhyming couplets of 21st century (often forthright) crudity. It’s an achievement in itself, but one that leaves most of the cast labouring with delivery, while director Caitríona McLaughlin’s choice of dialect is starting to make the Abbey seem more like the Provincial Theatre of Ulster than the National Theatre of Ireland.

Tartuffe at then Abbey fails to take flight. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Nor is the impact helped by Ryan Donaldson’s portrayal of the amoral conman Tartuffe: Molière’s title character is a monster, planning emotional and financial ruin for all around him under the guise of piety.

The play was banned when it made its first appearance in Paris as being far too close to the bone of high society. But Donaldson plays the role at the superficial level of benign sincerity only, leaving one wondering how the maidservant Dorine (an over-the-top Pauline Hutton who makes her a howling termagant) sees through to his venality.

Indeed, for fidelity to the aims and lightness of touch of the original, one has to look mainly to Frank McCusker’s duped Orgon and Emma Rose Creaner’s hilariously posturing ingénue Marianne, with good comedy support from Aislín McGuckin as Orgon’s furious wife.

Other than those, the real star of the evening is Katie Davenport’s superbly atmospheric design of tapestried walls opening into further luxurious interior vistas that root the production in its time and place. And the cast also rise to the occasion with disco-beat energy in the dance sequence (Paula O’Reilly choreographs) for Philip Stewart’s original music and sound design.

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Tartuffe runs until April 8, then tours nationwide until May 13.

King’s allegations offer a wisdom and understanding of human weakness

Eva O’Connor’s Horse Play can be read as a serious indictment of the horse racing industry. It’s also a sad and funny celebration of the mysterious bond between humans and horses.

A washed-up jockey is visiting his retired horse-trainer father in a nursing home. They are not on good terms.

Ciaran has a heart attack and in his unconscious state travels back to the time when he was “the holy child” (nicknamed because he crossed himself in public when he won his first race) and the later mysterious disappearance of his much-loved wonder horse, King.

In his hospital bed he meets King again, the horse taking him through the events that have brought him to his current state – an amalgam of bulimia, depression, and plain old-fashioned fear and loneliness. But he never, King points out, seemed to care that King too might be suffering from his life in the adoring public eye.

That’s the bones of it, but O’Connor constructs an endearing edifice around it, her examination of the human (and animal) frailties involved much more than a box-ticking exercise of social media concerns.

The dialogue is both touching and sassy, King’s allegations offering a wisdom and understanding of human weakness, a sneaky comment on the human narcissism that blinds us to a lot more than animal suffering.

It’s a clever choice of programming for the week that’s in it, with more than a few references to Cheltenham and its frenzy, as well as a sly glance for older audiences with a scenario that cross-references the much-loved Shergar and putative links with IRA thugs and crimes.

Sean Basil Crawford as Ciaran and Jarlath Tivnan as King both have zest combined with subtlety where required. The pathos never descends into bathos, and the bond between man and horse actually tears at the heartstrings.

Dominic O’Brien directs this Glass Mask production at the Bestseller Café.