Photo: Gregory CostanzoWhat a pleasure it is to go to the Pearl Theatre and see a solid production of a classic, well-acted by a regular company, in a small theatre at a reasonable price. The current production, Moliere's Tartuffe, is a case in point. It features none of the sort of bogus reinterpretation seen in, for example, Simon McBurney's All My Sons. Director Gus Kaikkonen and the reliable Pearl company (in particular, Rachel Botchan, Sean McNall, and Robin Leslie Brown) give us, well, Tartuffe. It's not an insanely brilliant production, and that's okay. With very few missteps (one of them, unfortunately, being a Tartuffe who is so transparently a con artist that no one could fall for his tricks), it honors the play and trusts the playwright.
Yeah, that Tartuffe was really something, eh? It just seemed like a case, all around, of missing the point.
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