A suit-jacket with shorts. A face-encompassing hat. A glittering chartreuse jacket.
High fashion meets the Tower Players in their latest production, “The Misanthrope” by Molière. The 1666 play was originally set in French High Court, but director George Angell has brought the performance into the modern day.
The show opened last night and will run through Saturday each evening at 8 p.m. with a matinee performance Saturday at 2 p.m.
“I picked it because I wanted to do it,” Angell said. “I was waiting for the right time.”
The play opens in a marble-floored, chic Paris apartment. Modern, simplistic furniture sit quietly before an Eiffel Tower peeking through a balcony terrace at sundown. Alceste, the male lead, wearing black skinny jeans and hipster glasses, discusses how one ought to behave in society with his companion Philinte .
Should we “never part with any word that isn’t from the heart?” Or consider it “uncouth and most absurd to speak the naked truth”?
Alceste, played by senior Aaron Pomerantz, believes in telling the truth 100 percent of the time, no matter what the consequences, Pomerantz said. On the other hand, his love-interest Célimène, played by junior Catherine Coffey, thrives on lies.
“She lies through her teeth,” Pomerantz added. “She’s a duplicitous, nasty person.”
Angell said the play asks great questions, such as what is the best way to get along in society in terms of personal interactions. He said Moliere’s questions in 1666 are just as relevant today as they were 350 years ago.
Pomerantz explained that the synthesis to Alceste and Célimène’s polar opposite views of truthfulness is shown in the character Philinte, who believes you should lie when you need to.
“I think we should question the synthesis,” Pomerantz said. “Of course you should never tell your girlfriend that her pants do in fact make her butt look big, but I don’t know if I’m okay with that synthesis.”
But there aren’t just truth-tellers and liars – Senior Leslie Reyes described her character, Arsinoe, as a prude and a hypocrite.
“Everyone fears her,” Reyes said. “She is the friend no one wants to have because she will talk about you behind your back.”
Arsinoe is completely infatuated with Alceste and burns with envy because she doesn’t have him Reyes said.
“During one practice I followed him so intensely he ended up falling over the couch,” Reyes added.
She said Arsinoe thinks Alceste shares her virtues and morals, but she’s a shallow character ridden with vice.
Reyes had plenty of praise for her fellow actors. She said Pomerantz has mastered speaking in couplets and not allowing for the natural “sing-song” the rhyming words create.
“I’ve see the most growth in Coffey. This is a completely different character that she usually plays, but she has done such a good job,” Reyes said, adding that Coffey has become the flirtatious, young woman that Célimène is.
She also praised freshman Chandler Lasch, who plays the dissatisfied maid of Célimène.
Lasch said Basque is very sassy and angered all the time.
“She hates her job and everyone she has to interact with,” Lasch added. “People probably think I’m angry and sassy all the time, but I’m not.”
Lasch said she acted some in high school, but nothing at this level of professionalism.
“It’s really exciting. There is no sense of, ‘what are these freshmen doing here?’” Lasch said. “It could have been intimidating, but it hasn’t been.”
She’s excited about her over-the-top costume, but confessed she doesn’t often wear tall heels.
“I went for so long during practice without falling, but then I tripped and it was really embarrassing,” Lasch said.
For students unsure of whether or not they should come see the show, Reyes said if for nothing else, come for the costumes.
“See Bryan’s costumes! They are the best things ever and so beautiful to look at,” she said. “I know that’s a shallow thing to say, but this is a shallow show.”
She also said the set is amazing and spectacular to look at.
“And there will be pugs,” Pomerantz added.
Angell’s two black pugs make a cameo appearance before a “pug-wrangler” takes them off-stage and back home.
“This is a great chance to see a play that isn’t Hamlet or Oedipus that we read in our classes at Hillsdale,” Pomerantz said.
The play doesn’t leave the audience with answers, but plenty to mull over. Should Alceste be so utterly persecuted for his sheer honesty? Is there a place in society for friendly, but fake, decorum? As the drama of love and its triangles unfold, the audience tackles betrayal, flirting, white lies, and dirty secrets.
