TDF Stages

Why modern-day playwrights and stars like Matthew Broderick find the 17th-century dramatist so urgently funny

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The Bard is always a summer favorite, but this month Molière dominates the spotlight. Often called the French Shakespeare, the renowned 17th-century playwright is enjoying a welcome renaissance with two concurrent productions running through the end of June: Red Bull Theater's jolly adaptation of his hypochondriac comedy The Imaginary Invalid at New World Stages, and Prosperous Fools at Brooklyn's Theatre for a New Audience, Taylor Mac's raucous riff on his social-climbing satire Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.

"Molière is very scathing about people who are solipsistic, ego-driven and obsessed with the self," says playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, who adapted The Imaginary Invalid for Red Bull. "He's very good for a time when people take themselves very seriously and have an enlarged sense of their own self-worth."

The original 1673 script, which turned out to be the ailing Molière's final work (he collapsed while performing the title character and died shortly thereafter), is a three-act comedy-ballet complete with dance and musical interludes. Hatcher, who previously revamped Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector and Ben Johnson's The Alchemist for Red Bull, takes a freewheeling approach to the text, compressing the play into a single act and streamlining the action into one day while retaining the period vibe. Hatcher particularly wanted to showcase the comedic talents of Mark Linn-Baker as Argan, who is convinced that he's at death's door and surrounds himself with scammers eager to exploit his delusions. Red Bull founder Jesse Berger directs the ridiculous, door-slamming farce, which costars two-time Tony nominee Sarah Stiles and company stalwart Arnie Burton.

"My definition of a classic is a play that, no matter what stupid thing you do to it, still gets up the next morning and goes back to being a classic," says Hatcher. "I tend to think of it the way the Marx Brothers [approached their movies]. No matter what the setting, there is always a contemporary zest. But the essential story is still about a man who likes to have doctors around because he doesn't think anyone loves him. I'd like to think that Molière would embrace our adaptation because it doesn't treat his stuff as precious."

Prosperous Fools, meanwhile, is a total reinvention, a lampoon set at a dance company gala gone awry that playwright-star Taylor Mac says is "borrowed from Molière and twisted. In Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Molière has got a sort of new money guy, very bougie, who is trying to learn how to impress the cultural elite. You could say Molière's play was a satire on the middle class and mine is a satire on the wealthy. It's both a Juvenalian satire, which is very bitter and angry, and a Horatian satire, which is silly and fun." The cheeky romp sends up all the players involved in contemporary artmaking: the ambivalent auteur (Mac), the obsequious intern (Kaliswa Brewster), the agitated artistic director (Jennifer Regan), the oafish oligarch benefactor (Jason O'Connell) and the self-important movie star philanthropist (Sierra Boggess).

Like Molière who acted in his own work, Mac, a MacArthur genius and irrepressible performance artist, stars in Prosperous Fools as the dancer-choreographer commissioned to create the gala ballet. Directed by Darko Tresnjak, the play is witty and vulgar but also has sharp bite. Molière targeted all levels of society but avoided attacking his royal patrons, who guaranteed him work. Mac impishly targets cultural philanthropy, the very hand that feeds all modern-day artists.

"We have a culture that is feudal in the sense that the donor class is dictating the arts," Mac contends. "So rather than supporting the arts with our taxes so that everyone can have access and the artists can be free, the wealthy decide what should be seen and what should be funded. That's a shame. From my perspective, taxes aren't a punishment; it's a Groupon because you get so much more for so much less because we are all paying into it together. I think it's an important conversation to have, especially now with how the Trump administration is taking over our culture."

Mac decided to use Molière's comedy as a template because "I think there's a devil's grin in it—it's fun but with teeth. He sees problems in the world and likes to address them. I think that's worthy."

Perhaps that's why Molière is so popular during this fraught time. The Brooklyn-based troupe Molière in the Park wrapped up its own take on The Imaginary Invalid just last month (with rumors of a possible remount in July) and this fall, Lucas Hnath's spin on Tartuffe, a searing comedy about a sanctimonious fraud, will bow at New York Theatre Workshop starring Tony Award winner Matthew Broderick in the title role alongside David Cross, Amber Gray, Francis Jue, Lisa Kron and Bianca del Rio.

Molière in the Park founder Lucie Tiberghien, who translated The Imaginary Invalid herself, says that the playwright's work endures because "the things that make us laugh or scared or vulnerable are the same today as they were back in the 1600s."

Hnath agrees that Molière's work remains relevant. "While my take on Tartuffe doesn't update the time, place or plot, it does elaborate on the original's arguments, placing them in dialogue with some present-day anxieties," says Hnath, an Obie winner for The Christians and a Tony nominee for A Doll's House, Part 2. "Molière makes drama out of argument and counterargument. It's what I also appreciate about, say, Ibsen and the Greeks, except when Molière does it, it's funnier."

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TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for Imaginary Invalid and Prosperous Fools. Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.

The Imaginary Invalid is frequently available at our TKTS Discount Booths.