Hyper-stylish staging — those costumes! That set! — and sharp acting make for a blasphemously sexy evening. Â
By Marke B.Â
BAY STAGES Despite torturing the homeless, interfering with children, and other somewhat breathtaking local offenses, the Catholic Church, one assumes, will hardly meet its ultimate reckoning in the Bay Area, with its rapidly closing parishes, religious experimentation, and legions of stalwartly gay ex-Catholic refugees.
So: a 350-year-old French comedy about a thieving, horny rapscallion who impersonates a man of god in order to swindle a pious, rich family of its property, thereby revealing the hypocrisy at the heart of the Church itself? Might not seem too relevant to our particular milieu.
Yet a stunning, delightful staging of Tartuffe at the Berkeley Rep (through April 13)  is smart enough to realize that Moliere’s scandalous 1664 play — which so infuriated the Church that King Louis XIV censored it — merely zeroes in on the hypocrisy of that particular religious empire because it was the fattest target at hand. This Tartuffe cheekily widens its aim, taking on our moment’s opaque spirituality, lust for wealth, even our blind willingness to sign over communal resources to anyone with a solid self-marketing plan, a Crossfit body, and a great haircut.
But first things first: You won’t be able to take your eyes off of this play. Staging Moliere always requires a certain flair for artifice, and director Dominique Serrand brings it, bigtime. (From the third act of ACT’s just-closed Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play to the obvious send-ups of Thrillpeddlers’ current Jewels of Paris, we’ve been having a lovely Moliere-feeling moment; now here’s the real deal.)
Serrand himself, along with Tom Buderwitz, designed the striking, cavernous set depicting the wealthy Orgon family home. Marcus Dilliard’s wonderful lighting swathes the mansion’s portals in various stages of daylight. And costumes by Sonya Berlovitz — from breast-baring frock coat to hyperbolic fuchsia poof — will have fashionistas regarding this Tartuffe less as Moliere’s than Gaultier’s.
The hyper-stylization extends to the acting, but doesn’t freeze the heat of this production, nor render it pretentious. We get a melange of styles, from the salty hysterics of good housekeeper Dorine (Suzannae Warmanen) and the cutesy silent-movie-like mugging of star-crossed sweethearts Mariane (Lenne Klingamen) and Valere (Christopher Carley), to Uncle Cleante’s mild, penetrating voice of reason (Gregory Linington, whose relatable California Dad affect somehow sparked the most genuinely blasphemous feelings) and the thundering stubbornness of Monsieur Orgon (a wonderful Luverne Seifert, not overdoing things), whose blind allegiance to religious imposter Tartuffe drives the plot.
Oh, and then there’s Grandma, aka Madame Pernell, wheeling about in defense of Tartuffe and decrying the moral decrepitude of her family — that’s Michael Manuel in full mourning-widow drag, played to the hilt for laughs.
There are two main events in the play (besides a satisfying twist at the end that could be read as a perverse plea for governmental oversight of religious affairs). The first is the entrance of Tartuffe himself. If you’re going to spend most of the first act building up Tartuffe’s character through the other character’s alternately disparaging — everyone in the house but Monsieur Orgon and Grandma sees through his deceipt, but are too restrained by religion and propriety to do much about it — and rapturous monologues, you better damn well have a great Tartuffe to pull out of the wings.
Steven Epp fits the bill perfectly — part bleach-blonde gym queen (every move he makes on stage results in an abdominal crunch, and he can’t help baring his pecs at the slightest opportunity); part slithering lech oozing ambiguous sexuality, perpetually accompanied by a pair of acrobatically mincing manservants (Nathan Keepers and Todd Pivetti); part venture capitalist-like self-promoter, wondrous at his own social advancement until his bubble bursts. A longtime collaborator with director Serrand, Epp accompanies each line with kinetic gestures, a serpent perpetually offering an apple of deceptive language. (The adaptation, by David Ball, drops in enough clever rhymes to pay tribute to the original’s rhyming alexandrines and give the translation a solid theatrical shape.)
Tartuffe’s nemesis is also his loins’ desire, Orgon’s wife Elmire, played by Sofia Jean Gomez, with young Jessica Lange-meets-House of Cards’ Robin Wright intensity. She’s a formidable match for Tartuffe, and if her scheme to entrap him — by letting him wriggle into her boudoir while Orgon spies — doesn’t go quite as expected, at least she goes down swinging.
Again, in this production the Catholicism is more architectural that theological, its symbols and rituals put in service of decorative mis en scene than direct philosophical argument. Clumsily swung incense thuribles and high-wielded crosses yield more giggles than gasps, and come to represent symbols of all pretensions to moral superiority, including those of our own time and place. This Tartuffe may as well be a newly-minted CEO fresh from dinner at Saison, rolling out his yoga mat as he checks his email and plots another app launch.
TARTUFFE
Through April 13
Various times, $41-$87
Berkeley Repertory Theater
2025 Addison, Berk.
Tickets and more info here
PS There is a full bar inside the Berkely Rep, which is awesome (you can take your drinks to your seat), and if you’re looking for a great, very affordable meal beforehand, hit up Kaze Ramen on University Ave.Â
