Don Juan Delightful

by Toby Zinman

Don JuanThrough May 19, McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, N.J., 609-258-2787

It may be important to theater history scholars, Molière mavens and 17th-century French literature professors that this brilliant and delightful production is based on a recently recovered script discovered in Amsterdam -- the only uncensored version of the great playwright’s Don Juan. What’s important to theater-goers is that this is a terrific show: funny, witty, intellectually provocative, oddly relevant, gorgeously set and costumed and very impressively performed.

Stephen Wadsworth (the adapter/director who gave us the splendid Marivaux productions several years ago) has turned his many talents to this play and made it live again.

Don Juan here is not merely the legendary womanizer, the compulsive seducer. Which is not to say there isn't a lot of seducing going on, it's that the seducing is not the issue but merely a byproduct, one of the many ways Don Juan indulges himself. A rebel against all of society's rules and proscriptions, intolerant of the self-righteous, mealy-mouthed moralizing of church and state, Don Juan does what he feels like doing, and if girls are ruined, if marriages are wrecked, if the occasional viceroy is murdered, the occasional tailor stiffed for his bill and the occasional father outraged -- well, that's just too bad.

Intellectually acute, contemptuous of anything not based on logic ("arithmetic: now there's a belief system"), he will eventually indict society's hypocrisy in a tirade -- and I dare you not to think of Enron or the recent papal treatment of the Catholic Church's sex scandals. His servant, Sganarelle (the role Molière played in the original production) argues with Don Juan every step of the way, proving himself a babbler, a hypocrite and generally adorable.

Wadsworth has wisely decided on a histrionic style (lots of declaiming, arms raised to the heavens, facing the audience), which is somehow simultaneously engaging and hilarious and superb. The costumes (Anna R. Oliver) are fabulous, full of flounces and stripes and buttons and ruffles, and the set (Kevin Rupnik) is winkingly, wonderfully fake.

Adam Stein is unflagging, unyielding and just generally great in the title role. Cameron Folmar is irresistible as Sganarelle, while Francesca Faridany is a fine Don Alonso and an even better Donna Elvira. The rest of the large cast is up to the very high level set by the leads, and the tonal shifts are simply delicious (especially as accompanied by Christopher Walker’s melodramatic underscoring).

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January 19, 2006
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