Don Juan

by Toby Zinman

Long ago, before cultural literacy fell into its long winter’s nap, "players" were called Don Juans or Casanovas or Lotharios. This assumed that the public understood allusions that extended beyond Las Vegas. It also assumed that the issues about these legendary seducers were not the women, but the affront to morality and decency, and that the issues for these legendary seducers were not the women, but self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement: cock of the walk, excuse the expression.

In Moliére's 17th-century play, Don Juan is the gold medalist in the sexual Olympics: Any woman who catches his eye wins his lustful heart for about 10 minutes: virtuous girls, other men's wives, peasant maidens, nuns -- you name them, he seduced them, and often even married them. If their husbands or fathers intervened, he often killed them. This is bad behavior by any standard, and good material for satirizing a hypocritical society that pretends to righteousness in condemning Don Juan, but excuses its own immoralities. All this is pretty obvious and heavy-handed, and if the Moliére comedy is to work, it has to be so stylish, so charming, so, well, seductive, that we are amused and indicted simultaneously.

Style and charm are in short supply in this very student production (what a relief it is when Peter M. Donohue, who chairs the theater department at Villanova, comes in for his bit part as D.J.’s father). John Kiefer Galla handles the comic role of D.J.’s long-suffering servant quite nicely. Juan M. Bertran-Astor in the title role has what I assume to be a real Spanish accent (but isn’t everybody in the play supposed to be Spanish? Or, of course, French?). He lapses into uptalk and generally comports himself like a street-corner hustler rather than an elegant, decadent nobleman. His accuser, Dona Elvira, is played by Daniella Leah Vinitski, who seems to be wearing her mother’s high heels and speaking her mother’s high language.

In addition to the Moliére characters, director James Christy has decided to decorate the production with tango scenes (where is Al Pacino when you really need him?), a bevy of women (thieved and unearned from Fellini's film, 8 1/2, along with Mastroianni's whip and black hat) and a group of commedia dell'arte tumblers who engage in pointless acrobatics, along with lots of distracting stage business: a trapeze, cigar smoking (which has the whole audience coughing) and rope swinging. At the curtain call, I found myself echoing Sganarelle: "I am reduced to applauding what I deplore."

Don Juan

Through Nov. 23, Villanova Theatre, Vasey Hall, Lancaster and Ithan aves., Villanova, 610-519-7474