Word: orgonized
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...holy man; he induces a pious bourgeois to part with his money, his house, his daughter's hand in marriage and, ultimately, his most dangerous possession, a cache of incriminating documents left by a friend who has fled into exile. In his infatuation with Tartuffe, the good, decent Orgon alienates almost every member of his household; yet when ruin strikes, they rally loyally to him. The crucial question for every production is whether Orgon (a role Moliere himself played) deserves this fidelity. Is TartufFe an obvious rogue and Orgon therefore a buffoon who should know better? Or does Tartuffe...
...nonetheless. Director Grey Cattell Johnson has captured every drop of Moliere's satirical venom, and the spring of his theatrical tension is wound tightly. As the play opens, Marianne prepares to marry her beloved Valere. Plans are thrown out of kilter by Tartuffe, a hypocrite whom Marianne's father, Orgon, has decided that Marianne should wed Tartuffe instead of Valere. By this time, everyone else in the household has become sick from Tartuffe's hypocritical moralizing and pretended disapproval of even the innocent pleasures of dancing and receiving company. They plan to unmask Tartuffe's real nature to Orgon...
Elmire reminds the skeptical Orgon to reveal himself before things go too far. McElvain descends the stairs with utmostholy piety; Rodgers leads him on with an ironic smile. Sneering at Orgon's simplicity, McElvain rips off his hairshirt (revealing clean linen underneath) and prepares to go at it. Director Grey Johnson draws out the scene for all it's worth, keeping Orgon (Bill McCann) under the table until Tartuffe has practically consummated the affair. Rodgers, displaying genuine alarm, keeps kicking McCann under the table, unable to believe he could hesitate so long before putting a stop to things. Johnson controls...
Under Tartuffe's snaky spell, Orgon accedes to the disruption of his household, disinherits his son, signs away all his property, affiances his daughter (Swoosie Kurtz) to Tartuffe, and sweeps his wife into Tartuffe's sweaty-palmed lechery in a seduction scene made hilarious by Tammy Grimes. This is madness, as Moliere knew. As he also must have known, it is a disturbing, distorting mirror image of Christian divestiture - giving away all worldly goods, cutting one's closest human ties to achieve a holier state of grace...
...fright wig of deceit. His flamingo legs carry him with awkward zest from sin to sin, while his tongue utters unguentary lies. Yet we are too conscious that he is a self-aware villain, scoring stunning acting points without carrying complete emotional conviction. And Stefan Gierasch's Orgon is not quite the ideal foil. He seems more like an exacerbated paterfamilias who wants Tartuffe to cow his recalcitrant brood rather than a breathless gull hopelessly infatuated by a bogus saint...