Great review in "Backstage!"

Backstage has given "School for Wives" a great review and described my role as "spectacularly naive and innocent," stating that "Madison makes Agnes' naiveté a perfect foil"...!



Reviewed by Neal Weaver
Monsieur Arnolph (Bo Roberts) has a pathological distrust of women, but he wants to marry, despite an abiding fear of being cuckolded. To assure his marital bliss, he latches on to 4-year-old Agnes, makes her his ward, and sets out to mold her into a perfect wife. He has her educated in a convent, cloistered and free of all knowledge of the world. Now Agnes (Jessica Madison) has reached marriageable age, so Arnolph moves her to Paris, intending to marry her at once. She's spectacularly naive and innocent; but far from protecting her, her unworldliness makes her a sitting duck for the first handsome blade to come along. She spots young Horace (Dave Mack) in the street, he sees her, and in a trice, they are smitten with each other. Unfortunately, Horace chooses Arnolph for his confidante, unaware he's the girl's guardian and intended husband. Endless confusions and complications ensue, but love will find a way, aided and thwarted by Arnolph's dimwitted servants (Cynthia Mance and Kenneth Rudnicki).

This new translation-adaptation of Molière by director Frederíque Michel and production designer Charles A. Duncombe is clever, colloquial, and far more actable than most recent versions. Michel gives the piece a coolly elegant and stylized production, emphasizing the play's rueful wisdom as well as its comedy. Duncombe provides a simple but handsome set, while costumer Josephine Poinset effectively blends period and contemporary costumes. Roberts nimbly sketches the shattering of Arnolph's smug self-righteousness and his ever-growing frustration and desperation, while Madison makes Agnes' naiveté a perfect foil for Arnolph's manipulations. Mack brings considerable charm to Horace, but the stylized movement sometimes renders him a bit epicene.