Review: Tartuffe (remixed), Marylebone Theatre ★★★½

Tartuffe (remixed), Marylebone Theatre

Photo Mark Senior

In Molière’s Tartuffe, written in 1664, the piety of the father and his naïve credulity allow his manipulation and entrapment by Tartuffe. Tartuffe (Remixed), currently playing at the Marylebone Theatre, sets Molière’s play in a modern Nigerian / Jamaican family in modern Britain but this core theme remains.

The show begins with collective singing as we meet at the first event for Adanna (Sara Mokonen) and Sinclair (Ivandro Da Cruz Leite)’s upcoming nuptials, the bride price ceremony.

As we meet the two sides of the family, Adanna from a Nigerian background and Sinclair from a Jamaican one, we see their different relationships to faith. This becomes important later when Oga (Usifu Jalloh)’s fervour is what makes him want his children Adanna and D-Miz to revere Pastor Blake; Sinclair’s side aren’t irreligious, just far less devout, and that gap does some of the real work of the plot as Tartuffe wiggles into this opening with his own religious mask, tricking Oga and Oga’s mother-in-law with his priestly routine.

Alongside the two central families, there are two excellent grandmother characters, one for each side of the family and both were lively and sassy with real verve. From my rear stalls seat, I could not always make out all they said completely clearly in the ensemble scenes. This was a shame as the audience was clearly enjoying them and their comical stature intrigued me to hear more.

When we meet him late in Act One, Mark Rylance’s Pastor Blake (aka Tartuffe) is greasy and simperingly insincere, almost everyone sees through him. In a departure from early promotional images, Rylance plays him as an almost caricature-ish character, instantly reminiscent of Barry Humphries’ boorish Australian cultural attaché character, Les Patterson, to anyone who grew up with him and Dame Edna Everage on their screens . His facial grins and grimaces; false teeth and struts of delight make him thoroughly gross and unlikable but perhaps take it so unpleasantly far that it makes Oga’s belief in him a little unrealistic; the thought of a father marrying this man off to his daughter is truly hideous.

Act One takes its time. Tartuffe famously doesn’t appear until well into Molière’s original, and adapter and director Darren Raymond keeps faith with that original structure, but a contemporary audience’s patience for a title character kept offstage may run shorter than a seventeenth-century court’s did. The seduction scene later on, the hinge the whole plot turns on, could also probably run a little shorter. It’s clearly the moment Raymond wants to give room to, and it’s easy to see why, but I found my attention drifting slightly before it resolved.

In an uncomfortably edge-of-seat scene, Grandma (Suzette Llewellyn) is conned out of her fortune by Rylance. With passion, she explains the pardner system and how it has kept her safe from banks. In doing so, she guilelessly betrays her wealth to the pastor and opens herself to his wiles. You could feel the audience willing this not to happen and some “nooos” under breaths were palpable. This is the scene that is most convincing of Pastor Blake’s power to deceive as he ducks and weaves with small, seemingly simple promises, until the fraud is complete. The scene could have faltered with too little or too much explanation of how pardner schemes work, but hereto it has struck on just the right balance.

Molière wrote Tartuffe in alexandrine rhyming couplets which here have been replaced with iambic pentameter. Throughout, the verse generally works well though it does necessitate some slightly unwieldy rhymes at certain points which can cause you to notice the word choice rather than the plot; with some actors the speeches felt a little stilted. Oga’s son, D-Miz Christopher Mbaki’s delivery flowed the most like natural speech. The reaction to being evicted from the home when he tried to expose Tartuffe to his father displayed the anger and pain of being let down; Mbaki’s wobbling voice and drooped shoulders portrayed this and it was a very moving scene. The agony of watching your beloved father be fooled rang out.

The costumes are a delight and frequently the differences between the two families are hinted at through clothes with the Nigerian side more overstated and the Jamaican side of the family in t-shirts, for example. The detail in the programme about how these costumes were prepared and the effort taken is a fascinating cultural read. (As an aside, it is definitely a programme worth purchasing – packed full of interesting content, including the development of the play and the pardner system).

The set itself, for a family home, gave off something closer to a hotel lobby: pale soft furniture banked along the sides, bland rather than lived-in, and a kitchen at the rear stocked with spirits like something behind a bar. Perhaps this was a nod to the lack of warmth in family life since Oga’s first wife had died. Furniture changes were handled by crew members who’d been playing domestic staff moments before, carrying on tables and chairs mid-scene. It could pull focus a little if they were moving when others were talking.

Molière’s ending has annoyed people for generations; we studied it in my French degree as a famous example of deus ex machina (literally “god from a machine”, an ending with a surprise feature audiences could not predict). I teach the phrase in my primary class to try and help the children avoid frustrating their audiences. Darren Raymond here provides a set of different possible endings, each provided as a freeze frame, with a cast commentary about why each is not plausible. These are delineated with dramatic lights out in between, as a swift-moving cast reassemble. This format greatly amused the audience and successfully leant into Molière’s deus ex machina ridiculousness and was a clever way to make it less frustrating.

Writer Darren Raymond is the founder of Intermission Youth. Intermission Youth is a charity which has spent nearly two decades giving young people facing socio-economic barriers a way into theatre through Shakespeare and mentoring. Mark Rylance has been a trustee since the beginning. Cast members including Sara Mokonen and Christopher Mbaki are graduates of the youth programme that now work professionally through Intermission Ensemble, its sister company. For Morenike Onajobi and Ivandro Da Cruz Leite, Tartuffe (Remixed) is their professional debut.

This is an entertaining evening that reminds us that creepy chancers have existed down the generations and in every culture, and a true celebration of the Intermission charity’s work. Watching Intermission alumni like Onajobi and Da Cruz Leite make their professional debuts here is the most exciting part of the night. Onajobi has brilliant comic poise and when she eavesdrops on Oga and Adanna, her controlled movements deftly hold the comedy of the scene. Da Cruz Leite is a poised and steadfast fiancé even as Oga’s plans threaten to ruin his future. Each have a promising future, enabled by Intermission.

[Thank you to Diana Whitehead for a gifted ticket for an honest review.]

Images: Mark Senior

Tartuffe (Remixed) runs until 24 October, Marylebone Theatre. https://www.marylebonetheatre.com/productions/tartuffe-remixed

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