Peter Viney's Blog

Tartuffe
by Moliere
A New Version by Anil Gupta & Richard Pinto

Directed by Iqbal Khan
Designed by Bretta Gerecke
Music by Sarah Sayeed

Royal Shakespeare Company,
The Swan Theatre, RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon

Saturday 15th September 2018, 13.30

CAST

Asif Khan – Tahir Yaufiq Arsuf (“Tartuffe”)
Sasha Behar- Amira Pervaiz
Simon Nagra – Imran Pervaiz, her husband
Raj Bajaj – Damee Pervaiz, her stepson
Zainab Hasan – Mariam Pervaiz, her stepdaughter
Amina Zia – Dadimaa Prevaiz, her stepmother
James Clyde – Khalil, accountant and family friend
Michelle Bonnard – Darina, the Bosnian cleaner
Salman Akhtar – Waqaas, Mariam’s fiancé
Riad Ritchie – Usman, Tartuffe’s assistant
Yasmin Taheri- Pippa, a careworker
Shamia Chalabi – Zainab
Naveed Khan – PC Raj Kumar
Sam Pay – PC Tom Parry
Vivienne Smith- Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Wells

MUSIC
Sarah Sayeed – composer, MD, tanpura, harmonium
Pete Yelding – sitar, vocals
Andew Stone-Fewings – trumpet
Joelle Barker- percussion

(Riad Ritchie, as Usman, does vocal rhythm for a rap song)

Molière is invariably popular with adaptors. If it were an English play, we’d feel the need to retain the original 1664 lines, but as it’s French, it’s being translated anyway, which gives the production freedom in modernizing. I missed the Christopher Hampton version, which played in the West End earlier this year. So at the RSC we’re in Birmingham’s Pakistani Muslim community. The programme interview with Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto explains that this concept was Gregory Doran (RSC Artistic Director)’s idea, and that he then asked them to do it.

Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto are major TV sitcom writers, and worked on Goodness, Gracious Me, The Kumars at No. 42 and Citizen Khan, so are the “British-Asian” comedy specialists. They have radically adapted Moliere, though in the programme interview they say:

We were thinking, ‘The play’s 350 years old, surely the plot’s not going to hold water now? Turns out it does. We discovered what everyone else knew already: Moliere is a comic genius. He would have been just as successful if he were writing today – the plotting is lean and the pace and precision are as sharp as anything you’ll see on Netflix.

They had to change the ending. King Louis XIV saved Moliere’s bacon on this (whoops! A poor comparison in the Pakistani setting) when Moliere was threatened with excommunication for writing the play, and Moliere had to display his gratitude, which in the original is done with the ending as an obsequious explanation of how King Louis XIV will resolve all the problems of the characters:

We live under the rule of a prince inimical to fraud, a monarch who can read men’s hearts, whom no imposter deceives. The keen discernment of a lofty mind …
John Wood translation of Tartuffe, 1959

It goes on for a very long time indeed, has no pace or precision, and is better lost.

The new setting is a brilliant idea, superbly executed too. We can’t think ourselves back into a Catholic Inquisition, or a Protestant Salem witch hunt of Moliere’s era. The current discussion and divide in Muslim communities works for 2018.  They get in the debates on hair covering, Syria, women’s modesty. We rarely saw the hijab thirty years ago, the niqab and burka were unknown, because these are mainly imports from Saudi extreme Wahabi customs, which many say are cultural rather than religious. The Saudis have spent billions building mosques and promoting their hardline version of Islam.

The play adds that the history of Islam was tolerant and scientific. As historians will tell you, the most civilized and pleasant places to live in the Middle Ages were probably Moorish Granada or Muslim Bagdad. Jews and Christians were tolerated in those cities for centuries, and as soon as Spain conquered Granada, things got dramatically worse for Jews … and Muslims.

This version is such a radical improvement that I don’t know whether to index it on this blog under “Moliere” or “Gupta and Pinto.” I’ll simply put it in twice. I bought the playtext – sold at half price at the RSC – and read it the morning after. I’m consciously going to avoid quoting specific lines. You have to hear them … OK, just one. The son is told he will be sent off to Pakistan, to Rawalpindi. ‘But I got tickets for Glastonbury!’ he protests. That’s the culture clash in a nutshell.

Imran (Simon Nagra) with his guru, Tahir Taufiq Arsuf (Tartuffe) (Asif Khan)

The story. Imran is a wealthy Birmingham businessman. He is devoted to his holy guru, Tartuffe who he met at the mosque (Tartuffe was praying so loud everyone stopped to watch). Imran has invited Tartuffe to live in his house. His accountant, Khalid, is worried that money is being diverted to Tartuffe and tries to warn Imran.

Imran wants his daughter, Mariam to abandon her fiancé, Waqaas, and marry Tartuffe, so that he becomes a member of the family. The son Damee, is suspicious of Tartuffe, noting that he spends most of his time with PlayStation 4 on Imran’s 4K television.

In his turn, Tartuffe is bent on seducing Amira, Imran’s second wife (his first wife died). He is observed by the son, Damee, who tries to tell all. Damee is expelled by his father. Amira has to prove Tartuffe’s intentions. She does, but Imran has already given away the house and money to Tartuffe. Tartuffe also has discovered the family’s secrets, which places them in deep trouble. No plot spoilers on the new ending and resolution … though it has multiple levels.

Darina (Michelle Bonnard)

In this version, the daughter’s servant of the original has become Darina, a savvy Bosnian cleaner with cordless G-Tech. Michelle Bonnard takes the role, and it’s the Plautus cunning servant who saves the family, being brighter than any of them (think Frankie Howard as Lurcio in Up Pompei).  It’s a stock role that Moliere employed … a great 2017 version was comedian Lee Mack as Jacques in The Miser . In The Hypochondriac the servant role is Toinette.

Darina (Michelle Bonnard) has been told to cover her hair by Tartuffe – it only stays covered for seconds

Darina is an excellent modernization, and her role is expanded to bookend the play in both halves, and act as narrator and link, and to interact wth the audience. It’s almost the lead female role, certainly the co-lead role, and Michelle Bonnard delivers one of the funniest performances this year. The thing is Bosnians are also Muslims, as she explains, but she’s tough and feminist. She can contrast with poor Mariam (Zainab Hasan) who has a degree in Women’s Studies, but can’t stand up to her dad. The character also allows racist comments: she can’t be a Muslim because she’s not brown!

The holy man with a hard on, the religious guru / lecher, is an ongoing dramatic character. Moliere was not the first or last to write about it, though he nails it best of all. Think of the popes with mistresses, the uptight pious would-be-rapist, Angelo, in Measure for Measure, the cardinal in The Duchess of Malfi, or the film Elmer Gantry, or The Beatles with The Maharishi (they left when he started groping the girls), or the various American evangelists caught with their pants down.

Tartuffe, or here Tahir Yaufiq Arsuf (Asif Khan)

Tartuffe, or here Tahir Yaufiq Arsuf, is also a hypocrite and an imposter. The play’s construction keeps him off stage for a full two acts too, so we know what he is before we see him:

(I have) used all my skill and taken every possible precaution to distinguish the hypocrite from the truly devout man. To this end I employed two whole acts in preparing for the entrance of my villain. The audience is never for a moment in doubt about him.
Moliere, Preface to the 1669 edition of Tartuffe

Asif Khan, who plays the Tartuffe character or as often sub-titled, “hypocrite”, was last seen by me as the swashbuckling Captain Jack in Richard Bean’s The Hypocrite, a completely unrelated play. It explains why they couldn’t use The Hypocrite as the play’s title this year!

Dadimaa (Amina Zia)

The play begins with a Gupta / Pinto stock character, the tiny and aggressive Asian grandmother, Dadimaa (Amina Zia) berating the family. It’s a character straight out of The Kumars at No 42, but no less for that. My surprise was looking at the original Moliere, and so many of the seeds are there. The transformation makes it much funnier for today, but irritable old grandmothers are clearly a universal.

Khalil (James Clyde)

Khalil (James Clyde) is an important role. He is now a friend and the family accountant (rather than the brother of the husband). He is white, and a Muslim convert, which is why Tartuffe insists on using his original name, Colin, rather than Khalid. It’s Khalid who gets all the positive lines on Islamic history too. He is a sweetheart, quite, ineffectual but well-meaning.

Mariam (Zainab Hasan) with Darina (Michelle Bonnard) behind

Mariam (Zainab Hasan) has to break it to her poor fiancé, Waqaas (Salman Akhtar), that dad has ordered her to marry Tartuffe. They are a good physical contrast. Simon Nagra as Imran, the angry father, hits rage with massive sudden volume. He always looks and sounds right. Suited in the fist half, in grey traditional robe in the second.

Amira (Sasha Benar) with her stepson, Damee

The long and hilarious scene is when Amira (Sasha Benar) gets Imran (Simon Nagra) to hide under the sofa so he can observe Tartuffe’s attempted seduction. It’s beautifully played and directed. Sasha Benar pitches it perfectly, and Tartuffe’s struggle to remove his skinny jeans is a scene I’ll never forget. Damme, the son, (Raj Bajaj) had been hidden in a giant flower vase during Tartuffe’s previous attempted seduction.
Amira (Sasha Benar) with Tartuffe (Asif Khan)

The set combines all sorts of elements. Descending lighted tubes delineate the house, which has modern white spiral stairs and a row of TV screens. At the start one projects a family photo. Then when Tartuffe appears it disappears, and we have a text in Arabic (strict Islam prohibits showing the human face … I saw an Iranian pirate copy of one of my textbooks with the faces eliminated.) In Act Two they show Mecca. Somewhere in the attic we have a large metal picture of Mecca with a clock on the moon, a gift from a Saudi student. The two Mecca pictures looked much the same. The furniture and vases of flowers were outsize.

Damee (Raj Bajaj), Darina behind

And there’s the basketball, almost a character … in the early scenes Damee is in basketball gear, doing amazing things with the ball. It’s tossed between characters, as are cushions (reminding me of an old drama improvisation lesson where you throw a ball to select the next speaker). Then Tartuffe does all sorts of stunts with it.

The resolution: Waqaas (Salman Akhtar) and Imran (Simon Nagra)

Phew, music! The play has everybody interrupting Darina at the start with a vigorous Asian-rap dance to heavy metal. Rap occurs throughout, with Raj Bajaj as the main rap performer. At the end, Zainab Hasan (Mariam) leads another rap sequence. The nod is to Asian Midlands yoof music culture, but it also references Hamilton-The Musical if you’ve seen that. The mix of musical styles is dizzying, in a good way. Riad Richie, as Usman, Tartuffe’s assistant / hanger on, does a vocal-into-mic rhythm track for another rap.

I’ve enjoyed Gupta and Pinto’s TV work for years. This is squarely in the same area, and the characters they have developed from Moliere’s templates, as interpreted by this great cast, are such a marvellous comic creation, that I can see a six part TV sitcom easily growing out of the Pervaiz family. They’d have to think how to keep Tartuffe going into a second series, but they’d find a way. I hope they do it!

The play is provocative (as it should be) and thought-provoking. It’s bang up-to-date with its music and dance as well as in its aside allusions to Brexit, and the Windrush passport issues.

Sometimes, we disagree on ratings. Not on this. We both said “Maybe the best play we’ve seen so far this year.” An unequivocal five stars.

*****

PROGRAMME

A must buy. You get an essay in the context of Moliere’s play in the 1660s, plus an essay on charismatic imams in Islam, an interview with the writers and a very funny essay on Muslim Birmingham by Shazia Mirza, and an essay on the music by composer Sarah Sayeed.

We were fascinated by the programme reproduction of an engraving of Moliere meeting Louis XIV. The faces are so similar to the TV Versailles that we wondered whether they’d cast from it!

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

4 star
Michael Billington, The Guardian ****

In one of the most potent lines of the production, Imran’s closest friend asks Tartuffe “how the most tolerant and academically inquisitive religion in the world ended up being hijacked by people like you?”

Domenic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph ****

Complex issues, then, nestle in the midst of the froth – possibly incendiary ones, depending on who’s watching. Just the kind of challenging fare our theatre needs.

Christopher Hart, Sunday Times ****
Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail, ****
Catherine Vonledbur, What’s On Stage ****

3 star
Dave Fargnoli, The Stage ***

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

Some of the cast are also in Tamburlaine and Timon of Athens this RSC season.

PLAYS BY MOLIERE
The Hypochondriac by Moliére, 1673, Bath Theatre Royal
The Misanthrope ETT by Moliére, 1666, adopted by Roger McGough ETT
The Miser, by Moliére, 1668, adapted by Sean Foley & Phil Porter, 2017

IQBAL KHAN, Director
Anthony & Cleopatra, RSC 2017
Macbeth, Globe 2016
Othello, RSC 2015
Romeo & Juliet, Box Clever Tour 2014

JAMES CLYDE
King Lear, RSC 2016 (Duke of Cornwall)
Cymbeline – RSC 2016 (The Duke, Cymbeline’s husband)

ASIF KHAN
The Hypocrite by Richard Bean, RSC 2017

MICHELLE BONNARD
Racing Demon, Bath 2017