MOLIERE LITE

By Richard Zoglin

AT A TIME WHEN BROADWAY CAN'T lure even Neil Simon back for a return engagement (America's most popular playwright will have his next work produced off-Broadway), it may seem odd to find it putting out the welcome mat for Moliere. Yet the adventurous Roundabout Theatre Company has resurrected two one-act plays by the 17th century French master, dubbed them The Moliere Comedies and fashioned a sprightly, entertaining evening. These are slight, early works by the author of Tartuffe and The Misanthrope, but in a fallow Broadway season, Moliere Lite is better than nothing.

Brian Bedford, the Shakespearean veteran who won a Tony nomination last year for Timon of Athens, has the central role in both plays. In the first, School for Husbands, he's the overprotective guardian of a young woman (Patricia Dunnock) whom he intends to marry. She, however, has other plans-namely, getting the guardian to unwittingly bring her together with the younger fellow she really loves. Bedford, wearing long Ben Franklin locks and mugging dryly to the audience, helps overcome the sense that these are stock characters whom Moliere would develop more fully in later works.

The second play, The Imaginary Cuckold, is even briefer, but busier and more satisfying. Bedford, this time with a wisp of flyaway red hair, is a mistrustful married man who thinks his wife (Suzanne Bertish) is having an affair with a young swain (David Aaron Baker) who, in turn, thinks his fianca is secretly married to Bedford. That's only about half the misunderstandings in this cramped, convoluted farce, but director Michael Langham keeps the threads from tangling and knits them into one expert, entertaining weave. -R.Z.