Tartuffe
A wily opportunist, who affects sanctity and gains complete control over Orgon, a rich bourgeois who in his middle years has become a bigot and a prude. To the great despair of his family and staff, Orgon has been brainwashed into believing Tartuffe’s rhetoric, to the point where Orgon feels morally obliged to break off his daughter’s engagement to her greatest love, Valère, and marry her off to this impostor; banishes his son; and signs off his worldly possessions to Tartuffe in the interim. Orgon’s family and staff try as best as they can to make him aware of Tartuffe’s sinister motives, but it appears to be too late!
Directed by: Sylvaine Strike
Produced in collaboration with the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) and the Alliance Française of South Africa.
Craig Morris (Tartuffe / Madame Pernelle)
Neil McCarthy (Orgon)
Vanessa Cooke (Dorine)
Khutjo Green (Elmire)
Camilla Waldman (Cléante)
Adrian Alper (Damis)
Vuyelwa Maluleke (Mariane)
Anele Situlweni (Valère)
William Harding (Monsieur Loyal / Officer / Flipote)
Set design: Sasha Ehlers & Chen Nakar
Costume design: Sasha Ehlers
Lighting design: Oliver Hauser
Stage manager: Orapeleng Sedi Moswane
Musical composition: Dean Barrett
Choreography: Owen Lonzar
Reviews
“So although the church may have lost its power, Sylvaine Strike reveals that Molière has not gone sour. Enabling this play to arc across the centuries, her deft control and sensitivities brings the characters to the fore, where in lesser hands they could be lost in a time of yore.”
Steve Kretzmann (http://thecritter.co.za)
“Eschewing notions of ‘reimagining’ or ‘recontextualising’, which have been the death knell for innumerable ‘updated’ versions of Shakespeare in particular, Strike focuses on the art of performance, trusting Molière to hold his own. Arguably her most inspired decision is to highlight the biting comedy of the text’s form of wonderfully translated rhyming couplets by heightening physical performance. She is a physical theatre acolyte after all, and drawing on the traditions of the Jaques LeCoq school, in this rendition gestures become exaggerated to the point the performance approaches a comic ballet. A dance of gestures in which words and movement are synthesised.”
Steve Kretzmann (http://thecritter.co.za)
"The beauty about this production is that the discomfort is matched perfectly with hilariousness.”
Megan Furniss (weekendspecial.co.za)
"Sylvaine Strike and her extraordinary cast have made such magic with this production that I am filled up with how wonderful, mad, exciting and inspiring, not to mention completely hilarious, brilliant theatre can be."
Megan Furniss (weekendspecial.co.za)
“Strike has put together an incredibly talented cast, each one a master of their role, and these roles are demanding. A rhyming script, spectacular physicality which is made to look every day, comedy underpinned by a frighteningly familiar rhetoric, and a rollicking story line filled with humour, emotion and an underlying darkness … and it’s made to look easy. Bravo!”
Briony Chisholm (http://www.artlink.co.za)
“A heady mix of irreverence, theatricality placed in a set simple in its magnificence, that is ramped up all the way and features contrivance pushed to the giddy hilt, Tartuffe is a tightly focused, beautifully choreographed tribute to Molière, which indulges in such an array of over-the-top shenanigans, you become embroiled in the madness and don’t want it to end.”
Robyn Sassen (robynsassenmyview.com)
"Tartuffe is a tightly focused, beautifully choreographed tribute to Molière, which indulges in such an array of over-the- top shenanigans, you become embroiled in the madness and don’t want it to end.”
Robyn Sassen (robynsassenmyview.com)
“It’s at once charming and chilling, with physical theatre so subtly incorporated that by the end you feel like the human condition is light on its feet.”
Briony Chisholm (http://www.artlink.co.za)
“Tartuffe is a theatrical delight. It is drinking from the pool of perfect performance and being submerged in a creative explosion of directorial vision. I feel restored to my theatre loving self.”
Megan Furniss (weekendspecial.co.za)