The Imaginary
Beasts are such chameleons that whatever theater piece they tackle, you think
they were destined for that form. I’m now convinced they’re French. Their
delightful, magical, frothy production of Moliere’s (rarely-performed) second
verse comedy, LOVERS’ QUARRELS (bouncing through April 19th) is a
must see this spring.
Director Matthew
Woods’ troupe of comedians (in the classic sense) is second to none. They
handle the featherweight verse like jugglers, keeping it aloft even as they are
turning somersaults. Richard Wilbur’s glorious translation fits the company’s
physicality like hand and glove/or visa versa.
The delicious
plot has lovers thinking they’ve been overthrown when they haven’t. Or someone
thinks he’s in love with someone and he isn’t. Or rather he is but she’s
disguised herself as a man. Hang it all. Plot doesn’t matter a whit. The romping
and rousting is what will have you giggling non-stop.
What marvelous
performances: William Schuller’s (totally unnecessary) depression is a thing of
beauty. He cannot be comforted by logic. He slumps beneath an absurdly funneled
hat (by Cotton Talbot-Minkin), aided and abetted by Amy Meyer’s wonderfully
droll, likewise misinformed, servant. The objects of their affections are Erin
Eva Butcher as a flighty, easily deluded young Lady and Beth Pearson as her highly
emotional servant whose face contorts into the most expressive wail you will
ever witness.
Bryan Bernfel holds
royally forth as a Latin-prattling prelate whose sole purpose is to confound
Joey C. Peletier as one of the two paters familias. (Sorry, that Latin bug is
infectious, isn’t it?) It works. Peletier suffers magnificently. Melissa Walker
is unrecognizable as the other feuding father whose son (a dashing Will Jobs)
loves the wrong woman. The right woman (the charming Lynn R. Guerra) contorts
herself into pretzels trying to attract the man without giving away her
disguise.
Anneke Reich
will try to explain all the fine points of the story but it’s Cameron M. Cronin
in a tour de force as the son’s much maligned servant, who is Moliere’s
mouthpiece: “Love’s an ass,” he tells us, “and he isn’t very smart.” Poor
fellow, with the weight of the world on his shoulders (literally), he can’t
seem to get out from under. And we profit, as the French would say, from his
misery. We profit handsomely.
