Truth Serum

By T. E. K.

THE MISANTHROPE by MOLIERE

Sincerity in society is like an iron girder in a house of cards.

--Somerset Maugham

This is the crux of Moliere's comedy, but he had the benign sanity, as did Maugham, to suggest that without the white lies everyone tells each day, society would be insupportable. The house of cards would crumple.

Alceste (Alec McCowen) is not a misanthrope in the sense that he hates mankind. He hates the web of social hypocrisy in which men and women entangle themselves. He hates everything that in Eliot's words is "as false as a smile and the shake of a hand." His insistence on absolute candor is blind, humorless and therefore funny. He is a moral prig who thinks of himself as the only honest man alive, and he wants the world to recognize it. He tells the truth till it hurts--others. Still, he raises an important question of principle. When does hypocrisy breed corruption?

Alceste's personal dilemma is peculiarly ironic. Here is a man who has an almost physical revulsion from all that society stands for, yet he is desperately in love with a girl who is society's darling. Celimene (Diana Rigg) is a widow of 20, a teasing, witchy, worldly enchantress. She gossips maliciously, she lies, she keeps two other lovers on the string. Yet until she finally rejects him, the puritan Alceste is in tormented thrall to this pagan Lilith.

In this British National Theater production, the source of Alceste's passion is made mirror-clear. Diana Rigg is a temptress of dazzling physical allure, a coquette of sportive guile, and her voice has the ring of Baccarat crystal. She is a true daughter of Eros. She could overpower many an actor, but never Alec McCowen. As a perfectionist's perfectionist, he was minted for this role. The way he cocks his head, utters a strangled cry, half raises an arm in arrested protest and drops it, lends a potent, persuasive credence to the outwardly ludicrous yet inwardly poignant image of a frustrated idealist. The pair's team play is so strong that the rest of the cast some times appear to be watching them with out hoping to match them.

The play has been moved up three centuries to the France of De Gaulle in 1966. This does not seem to affect The Misanthrope one way or the other, possibly because social mores remain remarkably constant. One may demur at Adapter Tony Harrison's decision to render the entire play in rhyming couplets. While these are agile and clever, they are somewhat distracting to an ear attuned to English prose in the theater. A hint of Gilbert and Sullivan enters the playgoer's mind and lightens what should essentially be a dark comedy. Leaving that aside, the redcoats have come with another triumph to their Broadway beachhead . sb T.E.K.

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