DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
Latest editorial
Theatre Review: Tartuffe
Cheap laughs blunt Moliere's razor-sharp comedy on bourgeois hypocrisy
Doing their best: The Tartuffe cast
[Manuel Harlan]
STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
Tartuffe
National Theatre
London SE1
THE essence of Moliere’s Tartuffe is the pillorying of hypocritical religious piety and the gullibility of a bourgeois family desperately seeking to give an ethical dimension to its vacuous life.
First performed in 1664, it certainly can and perhaps should be adapted to lend it contemporary relevance, but its core has to remain. This was well demonstrated in the all-black version, with the setting transferred to Atlanta, Georgia, at the Tricycle Theatre a few years ago.
But the National, in trying to adapt this 300-year-old galleon and giving it a contemporary make-over, leaves the structure creaking and cracking.
Similar stories
KEITH RICHMOND relishes a superbly conceived modern version of Aeschylus’ drama of murderous family succession
GEORGE FOGARTY is dazzled by a breathtakingly skillful puppet version of Shakespeare’s greatest love poem
PETER MASON applauds a stage version of Le Carre’s novel that questions what ordinary people have to gain from high-level governmental spying
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth