On Friday evening, my theater companion, Diana, and I met at
the Classic Stage Company’s East 13th Street home to see the New York première
of David Ives’s The Heir Apparent. I’ve seen a couple of Ives’s plays, many of
which débuted at CSC (New Jerusalem,
2008; Venus in Fur, 2010) and had fundamental
problems with them. New Jerusalem, which is an attempt to dramatize the synagogue
hearing that ended with the excommunication and expulsion from Amsterdam of the
17th-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, was densely philosophical and “all the talk
provided for a static atmosphere,” and Venus in Fur, which I saw in a Washington, D.C., revival, was what
I call a “phony drama”: “it’s ordained by the playwright, not organic to the circumstances.” (My ROT
report on Venus was posted on 11 July 2011, but the production of New Jerusalem predated this blog so I’ve
posted an old report on it on 20 April.
Ives is also known for his adaptation of the Broadway première of Mark
Twain’s Is
He Dead? in 2007-08.)
The Heir Apparent is Ives’s adaptation of Le Légataire
universel (1708), a farce in verse by French playwright
Jean-François
Regnard (1655-1709). The Heir Apparent was commissioned by the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., and
first produced in 2011 under the direction of STC’s Artistic Director,
Michael Kahn (who sent Ives Regnard’s play).
(There were earlier English versions of Légataire universel for the stage, first in 1769 by Thomas King, 1730–1805, the
English actor, under the title Wit’s Last
Stake and then again by Irish actor and dramatist Charles
Macklin, 1699-1797, with the title Will
and No Will. A literal translation
by English writer Richard Aldington was published as The Residuary Legatee in 1923.
Ives’s adaptation of Heir Apparent
was published by Smith & Kraus in 2011.) The
CSC production, staged by John Rando, started previews on 28 March and opened
on 9 April for a limited run; it was scheduled to close on 4 May but has been extended
through the 11th.
Regnard (his name’s related
to the French word for fox, renard,
which Ives found fitting), the son of a wealthy Paris merchant, led an
adventurous youth devoted to pleasure and travel. (In 1678, young Regnard, returning from
Italy, was captured by pirates and held in Algiers until ransomed.) Back in Paris, he took up writing largely as
a leisure pursuit and his first efforts were farces for the
Comédie-Italienne. His later, more substantial
works for the Comédie-Française, the House of Molière, retain the same
Italianate spirit laced with recognizable echoes of his more famous
predecessor. (Influenced by Commedia
dell’Arte, many of Regnard’s characters are takes on the stock figures of the
Italian comedies: in The Heir Apparent,
for instance, Geronte is Pantalone, Lisette is Colombina, Crispin is Harlequin,
Isabella and Eraste are Innamorati,
and the lawyer Scruple is a Dottore. If you know your Commedia, you’ll spot them
immediately.) In Le Joueur (The Gambler,
1696) and Le Légataire universel,
Regnard refuses to be censorious about the most callous, unsavory
behavior. No moralist, the farceur’s detached, uncomfortably frank view
of a corrupt society is depicted with boundless vivacity and lively comic
plotting.
Ives described his
source as “worldly, utterly honest, satirical without being condemnatory,
ofttimes bawdy, sometimes scatological, now and then macabre and it craves
jokes as a drunkard craves his pint.” The
playwright has called his version of Légataire
a “translaptation” because, though Ives sticks pretty close to Regnard’s
original story line—and the rhyming couplets—he inserts 21st-century humor and
contemporary references couched in modern English. (The New
York Post’s Elisabeth Vincentelli described Ives’s process as putting the
play “through his usual wash-and-spin cycle.”)
Challenged by a woman
in the audience, Peter Marks wrote his Washington
Post review of Kahn’s première in rhyme, and I can’t resist quoting his
synopsis of the plot:
The
tale is of a tightwad who
Has
never parted with a sou.
The
greedy rest conspire to fill
The
dole-out sections of his will.
To spell it out a little more: The rich old miser, Geronte, eternally at
death’s door, is liable to seizures and violent bowel movements, courtesy of the
potions Lisette, the old skinflint’s down-to-earth maid (potty jokes are rife). Furthermore, he’s also burdened with the
unwanted presence of rapacious relatives and servants who just want him to kick
off after he’s written his will to their benefits. Eraste, Geronte’s poor but handsome nephew,
plots with Crispin, the young man’s crafty servant, and Lisette, to get his
uncle’s money before Geronte dies so the young swain can marry Isabelle, the
daughter of Madame Argante (whose name appropriately sounds like the French for
‘money’ as she’s as avaricious as Geronte is stingy). As all this skullduggery, which involves a
lot of reversals, twists, disguises, impersonations, and other tomfoolery,
unfolds—or unravels, if you wish—geriatric Geronte, even as he’s shuffling off
the mortal coil, spends most of his time lusting after young (and need I add
beauteous?) Isabelle, greedy Eraste’s beloved. (As may be obvious, Regnard was considered a
successor to Molière. Heir Apparent, at least in Ives’s hands,
is The Miser meets The Imaginary Invalid meets The Misanthrope—with scatological humor.) The main point of Ives’s rendition (and, I
gather, Regnard’s, too) is . . . well, to populate the stage with zany, often
ribald, buffoonery. It’s just silliness
made even sillier by Ives’s anachronisms and incongruities, with references to Godzilla, high colonics, Cadillacs, and soccer moms, among others.
That, of course, is the entire rationale for doing Heir Apparent, a play with no ulterior motives and nothing on its
mind but good, dirty fun. Oh, Ives
inserts some comments about socialism and the 99 percent near the end—from the
mouth of Madame Argante, who, it seems, was something of an anti-capitalist
hippie in her youth—but it’s perfunctory and has no echoes anywhere else in
the play. (I assume Regnard didn’t try
the same thing—his rep is that his plays were totally without social
significance or moral judgments. The
Comédie-Italienne was closed by the king for its impolitic sentiments, but
Regnard wasn’t implicated and moved over to the more prestigious
Comédie-Française and greater success.)
Some of the jokes, aided by Ives’s rhyming couplets that make use of
plenty of 21st-century language and references, try a bit too hard, but the
second act had me tittering and guffawing pretty continuously. (The poop jokes are so constant that a scan of
Ives’s script would probably result in a complete lexicon of synonyms for
shit. Unless you want your preteens to
bring the vocabulary home, you probably shouldn’t take them along to the
theater for this show. They’ll love
it—you might not.)
I hate to make a generalization on such scant evidence, but if pressed,
I’d have to conclude that for me, Ives’s adaptations are better fare than his
original plays. I found both his other works forced and a
little ponderous, as if in both instances Ives was showing off his erudition. Heir
Apparent, in contrast, is light and sparkling (still, with a touch of
intellectuality in some of the more knowing references). Certainly, a lot of that is due to the source
material—from what I gather, Regnard’s writing is effervescent (some critics
even say his verse is better than Molière’s), while Spinoza’s philosophy is
notoriously dense and Masoch’s novel is . . . well, he did give his name
to masochism, after all. Of course, I’d
certainly need to see (or at least read) more of Ives’s adaptations (Georges Feydeau's
A Flea in Her Ear, 2006; Pierre
Corneille's The Liar, 2010; The School For Lies, 2011, from
Molière’s The Misanthrope) before I make a final judgment, but from what
I know now, this is how I feel.
In the end, of course, a farce like both Regnard’s
original and Ives’s “translaptation” depend for success on stage on the production and the
performances. John Rando and CSC have
put together an absolutely fabulous rendition of The Heir Apparent. Paxton
Whitehead, Broadway and Off-Broadway veteran, makes a perfect Geronte,
befuddled and constantly diarrheic, his voice a gurgle of phlegm (and
I-don’t-know-what-else) throughout the first three-quarters of the play (I’m
not sure I want to know how Whitehead accomplishes this), but transforming into
a clear and strong baritone in the end.
Whitehead likewise morphs from moribund, geriatric Geronte into a hale
and clear-headed older gentleman in the last minutes of the play. The
transition, aided marvelously by David C. Woolard’s stunning costumes and Paul
Huntley’s picture-perfect wigs (about which more shortly), is accomplished
nearly instantaneously: Whitehead goes off stage for his costume change as the
near-dead Geronte and returns in moments as the more vigorous one. (Getting in and out of those 18th-century
costumes is a challenge in itself—believe me, I’ve done it—much less doing it
fast! Several of the gags depend on
quick changes, including a cross-dressing shift.)
Possibly the most delightful surprise in an altogether excellent cast is
Carson Elrod’s Crispin, the resourceful servant whom Broadway World’s Michael Dale called a
“versatile clown” who leaves “no set piece unchewed.” I don’t know Elrod’s work (he played the same
part in Heir Apparent’s Washington première
three years ago), but he has quite a varied résumé, from contemporary farce (Noises Off) to Absurdism (Waiting for Godot) to Shakespeare (The Tempest, Measure for Measure, All’s
Well That Ends Well). I suppose it
goes without saying that he handles the period comedy and style superbly, but
what clinched his performance for me was that he blends the anachronisms and
incongruities that Ives clearly loves into a nearly seamless performance with
the fewest possible gear shifts. It
doesn’t hurt, in addition that Elrod does a more than passable impression of
Whitehead’s feeble Geronte that suggests the actor’s a pretty good mimic on top
of his other acting talents. (I wonder
how he did with Floyd King’s Geronte at STC, which I assume, knowing King’s
work, would have been quite different from Whitehead’s.) As Crispin crows, not
erroneously: “Well, I don’t care what anybody says, / I am a one-man
Comédie-Française!” (On Huffington Post, reviewer Fern Siegel
quipped, “He speaks no more than the truth.”) Incidentally, while Elrod’s doing Geronte,
Whitehead makes a reappearance and the two identically-dressed actors perform a
wonderful mirror routine reminiscent of Harpo and Groucho Marx from Duck Soup. (Director Rondo acknowledged that
the Marx Brothers comedies were “very important” influences on his “great love
for comedy.”)
Another wonderful turn is offered by David Pittu as the lawyer,
Scruple. His arrival is telegraphed long
before he appears so we know that he’s very short—but I’ve seen Pittu on stage
before (Gabe McKinley’s CQ/CX,
2012; John Guare’s 3 Kinds of Exile,
2013) and he’s a man of perfectly ordinary stature. When Scruple finally enters, however, he
doesn’t come up any higher than everyone else’s waist! There stands Pittu in his long, brown Louis XIV peruke, wearing a long,
black attorney’s robe, his buckled shoes barely poking out from under the
hem. He’s
performing the role on his knees, surely a physically difficult posture,
with the character’s shoes attached to the actor’s kneecaps! (Is this what my college theater prof used to
call “suffering for your art,” I wonder?)
Well, of course, his entrance is a sight gag that elicits an immediate
uproar in the house. But Pittu’s
performance is much more than just a sight gag.
He makes Scruple (in Regnard’s original, the character’s merely a
notary, but what a suitably ironic name for a lawyer!) a figure of both fun
and—would you believe—sympathy. Every
reference to height, even if it’s not meant to be directed to him—is taken with
supreme umbrage, with ever-increasingly pained expressions and objections. All the time, of course, we know he’s being
hoodwinked by Eraste, Lisette, and Crispin (disguised as Geronte), but Scruple,
in the face of nearly impossible impediments (this is where the real Geronte
turns up, among other hijinks), plows ahead, doing his due diligence and taking
down, as we later hear, every word Crispin-as-Geronte speaks. The scene as a whole is riotous, but Elrod
and Pittu top everyone without for a moment violating the spirit of the barely-controlled
pandemonium. (I don’t know how he
accomplishes it, but Pittu doesn’t move like a man shuffling on his knees, but
like one walking with very short legs.
And once again, Woolard’s costume design comes to the aid of the actor
because even though Scruple’s robe has a bit of a train, it hardly seems long
enough to hide what I knew had to be back there but, try as I might, I couldn’t
detect: the rest of Pittu’s legs. I know
theater is magic, but the last time I was this astonished by technical
achievement was back in 1985 when I saw Louise
Page’s Salonika during which a
dead soldier rose up from beneath a beach of actual sand with no
evidence of a tunnel or a trapdoor under the stage. Before that, I was maybe seven or eight at a production
of The Wizard of Oz
when, after the tornado, the lights came up on Dorothy's house with the Wicked
Witch’s legs sticking out from under one side.)
The entire ensemble, as I said, is excellent, and Claire Karpen’s
Lisette, Dave Quay’s Eraste, Amelia Pedlow’s Isabelle, and Suzanne Bertish’s
Madame Argante are all marvelously drawn characters even as they’re
recognizable types (especially if you know any Molière at all). Karpen comes off as a bit modern, though I
don’t know if that’s a deliberate choice or not, and it actually works fine in
Ives’s context—what with his own anachronisms and all. The character’s written very knowingly, which
suggests that she’s meant to be a little bit country and little bit rock ’n’
roll anyway. Quay has the appearance of
someone a little long in the tooth for a young innamorato (though I don’t think the actor actually is): he’s a tad
stocky and his blond hair’s receding a mite, which makes Eraste look as if he’s
been waiting a long time to get Geronte’s dough so he can marry Isabelle. This, in turn, makes Quay seem more desperate
to secure his inheritance, especially when his decrepit uncle sets his sights
on Eraste’s beloved. (This also seems to
render his passion for Isabelle a little perfunctory, as if he doesn’t so much
love her as need her complicity to gain Geronte’s million francs—but I’m not
sure this effect is intentional.) The
partnership among Eraste, Crispin, and Lisette, though clearly led by the
valet, is a mini-ensemble within the greater one: they do seem to read one
another’s thoughts—as demonstrated when Crispin sets up the impersonation of a
distant, hog-farming niece who’s come to claim Geronte’s fortune and Eraste
shows up in 18th-century French country drag snorting like a pig, followed by
an identically-clad Isabelle, and finally Crispin (with the addition of a
snout). Lisette emcees the melee.
Pedlow’s Isabelle is a take on the standard ingénue, which is precisely
how she’s written. Pedlow brings a
contemporary knowingness to the girl, who’s not above a little coercion or
strategic whining to further her ends. The
character’s essentially the pawn of the plot—Eraste must gain Geronte’s estate
in order to marry her, Geronte himself plans to marry her, Argante bargains her
daughter’s hand as a way to get some of Geronte’s wealth, and so on—but
Pedlow’s not averse to a little “queening” now and then to assert herself. Madame Argante is the only part in Heir Apparent who’s not a Commedia
character, though she is familiar from later comedy of manners; in 200 years,
she’ll be Lady Bracknell in rhyming couplets.
Billed as a “battleax,” Bertish plays her with little sense of humor, a
stern visage at all times. (She’s also
something of a mercenary Miss Havisham.)
Until the mercurial shift at the end, when we learn of her hippie-ish
youth, Bertish’s Argante is all business—and her business is the acquisition of
money, particularly Geronte’s. If she
can get her hands on it by marrying Isabelle to Eraste, all the better, but
she’ll marry her young daughter to ancient Geronte without Isabelle’s consent
if that’s what it takes. Bertish carries
herself regally (perhaps more precise to say imperiously), made even haughtier
by the tall “Fontange” wig she wears and widened by her farthingale, altogether
giving her Argante an out-sized and severe presence on stage. (Isabelle’s gown hangs more softly in
contrast with her mother’s hard-edged silhouette of cash-green.) Madame Argante’s transformation in the last
scene of the play is less believable than Geronte’s—he’s at least been in a
trance for a scene or two—and I’d be curious to see how Regnard wrote the
play’s ending, but if Bertish doesn’t solve the problems of how an elegant
money-grubber reverts to a socialist-leaning Occupier (or, for that matter, how
she evolved from that into what we’d seen for most of Heir Apparent), the actress at least proceeds straight ahead
without a hitch, as if the transformation were perfectly natural. The politics, as I said before, is forced
here, but Bertish just ignores that and forges on with commitment.
I’ve been commenting all along now on how well Woolard’s costume design
enhanced Ives’s script and Rando’s staging, even the cast’s acting. It’s probably almost unnecessary to say any
more, but I’ll sum up by declaring that the designer made really terrific use
of the TDF Costume Collection and his other sources (I gather CSC didn’t build
the period clothes for this show) to put together the look of the
production. I mentioned Madame Argante’s
green dress (and yes, I know francs aren’t green—but the audience is American
and here green means cash), but Geronte’s spiffy new outfit at the end of the
play, his wedding togs, is a silver suit of tunic and breeches, not quite lamé
but suggestive of that, that also recalls money (and here, the French does
parallel the symbol—money in French is argent,
which also means ‘silver’). Geronte now
sports a brand-new peruke, also a silver gray, of elaborate curls and ringlets
as styled by wig-designer Huntley.
In contrast with the elegance of the final costume changes, though not
so much of Geronte’s earlier attire, John Lee Beatty’s set is more like a
storage room for discarded period furniture than a rich man’s sitting room. (TheaterMania’s
Zachary Stewart likened the set to “a Williamsburg antique shop”—not the
Brooklyn neighborhood, I suspect, but the restored colonial town in Virginia.) The theater’s brick back wall is exposed, as
if Geronte hadn’t wanted to pay for paneling, and the décor is more jumble than
Neo-classical orderliness. We know that
the old skinflint has kept his very first centime (on which keep your eye, by
the way), but Beatty’s made it look like he’s closer to a hoarder than a mere
miser: an 18th-century Charles Foster Kane, perhaps. The lighting, which melds the whole together
successfully, is by Japhy Weideman.
Rando, who seems somewhat inarticulate in the interview published in the
CSC newsletter, has coordinated all these elements admirably. He’s worked with Ives numerous times since
the 1990s (Ancient History/English Made
Simple, 1996; Mere Mortals and
Others, 1997; Polish Joke, 2003; All in the Timing, 2013) and on
musicals, especially those presented by Encores!, where Ives, a script adapter,
introduced him. They’re obviously on the
same wave-length, and it shows in the stage results. The film comedies which Rando admires, aside
from the Marx Brothers’, include Woody Allen’s and the Peter Sellers-Blake
Edwards Pink Panther movies. The truth,
of course, is that not all artists can speak glibly about their own work, but
since, especially in theater, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not
the describing, Rando acquits himself and serves both Ives and his cast splendidly. Regnard and Ives created a clockwork plot,
with gears within gears, all spinning in different directions, though toward
the same end, and Rando keeps it all on course and in rhythm (not to forget
rhyme) with a nicely light touch.
The press was surprisingly mixed—and a little light, a number of usual
outlets not having published (at least not on line). In the New
York Post, Elisabeth Vincentelli opened her notice by declaring that The Heir Apparent “strains so much to be funny, it’s exhausting—if it were a jacket, it would
burst its buttons,” comparing the play unfavorably with Ives’s previous writing
in The School for Lies and Venus in Fur. Complaining that “the more-is-less nature” of
the production “grows wearisome,” Vincentelli blamed Rando’s “manic”
direction. Saying that David Pittu is
wasted on a “one-joke role,” Vincentelli remarked that he may need “a post-show
massage”—concluding that the “audience could use one, too.” On the other hand, the New York Times’s Charles Isherwood described the play as “boisterous,
bawdy and endlessly funny,” and the production as “directed with meticulous
abandon by John Rando.” “It is indeed
excessively good,” the Timesman
proclaimed, and the “entire cast excels.”
In the Wall Street Journal,
Terry Teachout characterized Ives’s play as “brilliant” and “elegantly wrought.” The WSJ
reviewer said “Ives's couplets glitter with close-packed virtuosity,” the
CSC “cast is perfect, and John Rando's staging is a slapsticky riot.”
Among the weeklies, the New Yorker
reviewer wrote in “Goings On About Town,”
“Ives’s baroque rhymes often delight,” and, “The director John Rando sets a
giddy, hurtling pace, crashing past unlikely verse and doubtful plot points.” In his Village
Voice notice, Tom Sellar dubbed Ives’s adaptation a “comic jewel” that “brims with
contemporary wit.” Concluded Sellar, “The
production, directed with exactness by John Rando, is a delight with twin
pleasures: the razor-sharp wit of Ives's flowing verse and the cast's gusto.” Entertainment
Weekly’s Jason Clark averred that, having “struck gold” in his past work, Ives “merely
strikes bronze” with Heir Apparent, a
“madcap laffer” in which Clark wished “more of [the jokes and gestures]
actually stuck.” Clark’s complaint was
that the “machine-gun ratio of jokes to spoken lines is about three to one,” but
he found that “so many of them pivot to the scatological, the result becomes
more wearying than cheering.” The EW review-writer called the cast “game,”
but felt that they are “a bit over directed by John Rando.” His final word was, “The Heir Apparent
strikes the same chord a bit too often.”
In the cyber press, Fern Siegel of the Huffington Post called Ives’s version of The Heir Apparent a “madcap” and “fast-paced” “fanciful delight”
that “proves loads of fun.” Director
Rando “has timed the action perfectly,” Siegel said, and “his hilarious cast is
uniformly tops.” On Broadway World, Michael Dale called Ives’s
script “nimbly penned” and the CSC presentation a “rollicking production.” The BWW
writer concluded, “Bouncing back and forth between highbrow wit and lowbrow
crudeness . . ., The Heir Apparent is divinely silly and a heck of a
good time.” Zachary Stewart
wrote in his TheaterMania review that
Heir Apparent is “an irreverent laugh
fest with more than a few moments of sublime linguistic brilliance.” The “off-the-wall ludicrous” references and the
“eloquent toilet humor” help make “for a zanier experience,” TM’s Stewart said, and the cast “lean
into this cartoonish reality” in a “well-choreographed lunacy” which Rando
“perfectly paces.” Concluded Stewart, “You'll
leave this one with a big grin on your face.”
On CurtainUp, Elyse Sommer called Heir Apparent “an old-fashioned caper” in which “we see [Ives’s]
own spirit superimposed.” Rando
directed, Sommer felt, “fast and furiously, but not too fast to land every
laugh.” The technical production is
“wonderful” and Sommer graded the whole cast “A or A+.” It all adds up to “a full-featured, enjoyable
entertainment for their ticket” price, concluded Sommer.
Now, I saved one published review for last
because . . . well, you’ll see. I
remarked above that Peter Marks had met a Washington theatergoer’s challenge to
write his Washington Post review in
verse, and when I surveyed the New York notices, lo and behold, what did I
discover? Adam Feldman of Time Out New York had done
likewise. Instead of spot-quoting his
review, I’m just going to reprint it here to close my report. Enjoy:
When rusting classics need
repolished lives,
Is anyone fitter than David
Ives?
He loves to dip his quill
where others daren’t,
Most newly in Regnard’s The
Heir Apparent.
With rhyming verse, Ives kicks
out all the jams,
Pentameter agleam with bright
iambs,
And happily creates for all to
see
A comic marvel at the C.S.C.
The 18th-century plot—already
a
Tad familiar from commedia—
Concerns young lovers, lawyers
and misers
And servants who serve as
their advisers.
But here the stock is flavored
to a T
With vibrant comic ingenuity.
A zippy Carson Elrod heads the
cast
As Crispin, crafty valet of
Eraste
(Dave Quay), a callow but
handsome fella.
Amelia Pedlow plays Isabella,
Who loves Eraste, but who,
despite her want,
Obeys her mom: the mean Madame
Argante
(Ripe Bertish), who will only
have her wed
To someone with a luxury of
bread.
The old Geronte (ace
Whitehead) fits that bill
And so Eraste must bend his
uncle’s will
To get the ancient pincher to
agree
To leave him all his dough as
legacy.
This summary can only just
begin
To limn the joys of Ives’s
loony bin.
There’s John Lee Beatty’s rich
set, and—oh
Yes!—whip-quick direction by
John Rando.
Go see the play and you’ll
surely concur
This Heir Apparent is a
farce majeure.
Okay, Feldman’s not as clever at doggerel as Ives, but, hey—it’s like
the dancing bear. It’s not how well he dances,
it’s that he dances it at all!
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