Excerpt:
"A 'Gentilhomme' for our times"
With a generous soupçon of witty anarchy, "The Bourgeois Gentilhomme" tumbles into Santa Monica. This sleek City Garage take on Molière's deathless satire of nouveau riche pretensions and aristocratic machinations is nominally avant-garde, mainly an unguarded hoot.
First performed in 1670 before Louis XIV, "Gentilhomme" concerns Monsieur Jourdain (the riotous Jeff Atik), his father a wealthy merchant who retained middle-class contours. Hopelessly oafish Jourdain thus obsesses over not just the trappings of nobility, which elude him despite the fawning efforts of a slew of tutors, but over trapping the nobles...
Conceived by Molière as a comédie-ballet, "Gentilhomme" carries many wicked analogies to modern mores. Director Frédérique Michel and designer Charles Duncombe slyly tailor our times into their tart adaptation, complete with anachronisms, nonstop postures and purposely limp songs by Duncombe and John Gregory Willard. The design scheme seamlessly weds the red-black-and-gilt elegance of Duncombe's set and lighting to Josephine Poinsot's splendid costumes...
Goaded by Atik's clueless climber, equal parts Bert Lahr, Don Rickles and a tea cozy, the nimble cast has a stylized field day...
Actually, their devotion to the detailed concept sometimes halts the antic fizz. Nonetheless, if full abandon is still finding its way, this hardly diminishes such a gracefully loopy soufflé.
-- David C. Nichols
"The Bourgeois Gentilhomme," City Garage, 1340½ 4th St. Alley, Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 5:30 p.m. No performances Nov. 28 and Dec. 22 to Jan. 8. Ends Feb. 22, 2009. (310) 319-9939. $20. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.
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