The first clue that something is amiss with Stageworks' production of The Miser is R. T. Williams' set.
Williams is one of the best things that ever happened to Stageworks — his designs for All My Sons, Hypoxia Zone and Talley's Folly were among the most attractive environments in any Bay area theater in recent years. But what greets us as we enter the Shimberg Playhouse of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center is a cluttered, confusing mess. Crowding the stage are upended chairs, boxes of pots and pans, mismatched tables, paintings, books and baskets — all suggesting someone's randomly stocked, seldom-visited attic or garage, but not the home of the fabulously wealthy miser, Monsieur Harpagon.
Still, it's early. Once Jackie Rivera and Kevin Whalen begin the action as the lovers Elise and Valère, we prepare ourselves for an enjoyable evening of 17th-century comedy. But then, more problems: Rivera seems uncomfortable in her unattractive modern dress (designed, like the other contemporary clothes, by Amanda Bearss), and Whalen comes across more as an ultra-American urban cowboy than a Frenchman from whom Molière's florid prose is supposed to flow naturally.
Matters look up when the sharply cartoonish Eric Burgess comes onstage as Cléante, Elise's brother. But moments later Jack Holloway, wearing a trench coat and resembling a detective in a Tom Stoppard farce, utterly fails to convince us that he is Cléante's — or anyone's — valet.
The contradictions continue for the rest of the evening: Richard Coppinger turns in an admirable performance as Harpagon, but he's surrounded by actors who seem miscast or misdirected, and for every thespian who has a clue that Molière ain't Arthur Miller — the comically phony Josh Goff as Master Jacques, for example — there's another who relies on an inappropriate and tedious realism.
Director Jim Rayfield is usually one of our best theater practitioners, but he hasn't found a unifying acting style — or theme, or concept, or raison d'être — for this Miser (which I saw in a preview). It's as messy as the set — and not much more interesting.
The story the play tells is full of stock characters, and is more an opportunity for virtuoso comic turns than a vehicle for deep truths about people or society. Harpagon is a skinflint who intends to marry off his children with every regard to financial advantage and none to their own preferences. But his daughter Elise is in love with Valère, who saved her from drowning and is posing as Harpagon's valet; and his son Cléante is in love with Mariane, an impecunious but lovely young woman whom Harpagon wants for his own wife.
With the help of the sexually manipulative Frosine, Cléante hopes to persuade his father to leave Mariane to him; but Harpagon is implacable, and his children's desires seem unattainable. Then someone steals Harpagon's treasure — buried near his house — and an unexpected confession comes from an unexpected place. Fate, it turns out, is not as miserly as certain old codgers.
The key performance, of course, is Coppinger's as Harpagon, and fortunately this versatile actor is up to the challenge. True, Coppinger too tends toward realism at times, but often enough he seems to recognize that he's playing a caricature — that he's supposed to be playing a caricature — and that there's virtue therefore in finding extremes of speech and behavior. Perhaps his best sequence occurs after someone makes off with his wealth and he turns to the audience and tells us that we're under suspicion along with everyone else. It's a magical moment — silly and theatrical and happily unconscious of that irrelevant fourth wall — and one only can wish that the whole production had taken the lead from these few seconds.
As I've mentioned, two other actors seem stylistically to belong to Molière's world: Josh Goff as Master Jacques is a playful showoff as he lies Harpagon and Cléante back into each other's good graces, and Eric Burgess as son Cléante is a smirking charcoal sketch of a bad boy: One look at him and we imagine long nights of dissolution in the company of other dedicated wastrels.
But then there are all the performers who sooner or later lose our credulity. Rivera as Elise ultimately doesn't make a persuasive romantic lead, and Whalen as her beloved Valère eventually registers as bland and one-dimensional. Gi Sung as Frosine is supposed to be some sort of temptress, but her sexuality seems more a matter of will than of person; and Bill Hendricks, as the older man that Harpagon has chosen for Elise to marry, is wooden and inexpressive during his few minutes on stage. The case of Magali Nass as Mariane is more complicated: Unlike most everyone else on stage, she actually looks the part — attractive enough to win both Cleante and Harpagon's hearts — but her silences are so suggestive and her stage presence so exotic, she seems to step out of a reality all her own.
Finally, Jonathan Cho in a couple of small roles does a good job of suggesting that a hypermodern, hyperstylized production might have made the play successful — if applied consistently. But Cho's performances aren't paralleled anywhere else, and if the hodgepodge of this Miser is supposed to be postmodern, there's just one problem: It doesn't work.
Sometimes a classic just cries out for a daring — and unifying — concept.
Anyway, I trust that director Rayfield and his many actors will survive this contradictory outing. After all, Rayfield is usually one of our most dependable directors, and Holloway, Whalen and Rivera are typically among the best performers in the Bay area. And the production is far from a total loss: Coppinger's performance alone is a considerable strength, and Burgess and Goff's contributions point to the success that might have been.
If I had to find just one culprit for the show's failings, I would single out not an actor or director but theater training programs — in universities, mainly — that fail to prepare students for the multiplicity of dramatic styles. Sure, movies and TV depend on realism. But Shakespeare and Brecht, the Greeks and Beckett, Molière and Joe Orton call for something else. If all an actor knows how to do is to "make it real," we'll miss much of what's most exciting about world theater.
Just as we miss much — too much — of what we should discover in this Miser.
This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2006.