DiRECTOR PETER EVANS ONLiNE RESOURCES BY MOLiÈRE A NEW VERSiON BY justin FLEMiNG ONLINE RESOURCES THE MISER Bell Shakespeare 2019, unless otherwise indicated. Provided all acknowledgements are retained, this material may be used, reproduced, and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
2 THE MISER COMPANY LIST CAST Harpagon Frosine Élise Mariane Signor Anselm / La Fleche Master Jacques Master Simon / Commissioner of Police Cleante Valère John Bell Michelle Doake Harriet Gordon-Anderson Elizabeth Nabben Sean O Shea Jamie Oxenbould Russell Smith Damien Strouthos Jessica Tovey CREATIVES By Molière Writer Director Designer Lighting Designer Composer & Sound Designer Movement & Fight Director Voice & Text Coach Justin Fleming Peter Evans Anna Tregloan Matt Cox Max Lyandvert Nigel Poulton Jess Chambers Cover image: 2019 The Miser, Photographer: Pierre Toussaint
3 CREW Stage Manager Stage Manager Assistant Stage Manager Production Assistant Head Electrician Head Mechanist Head of Audio Head of Costume Senior Cutter Costume Cutter Costume Cutter Tailor Tailor Costume Assistant Dresser Work Experience (Costume) Set Built by Props by Scenic Artist Wigs supplied by Lighting supplied by Freight provided by Danielle Ironside Katie Hankin Georgie Deal Paisley Williams Nick Toll Bob Laverick Andrew Hutchison Rosie Hodge Robyn Fruend Brooke Cooper-Scott Claire Westwood Gloria Bava Joanna Grenke Janelle Fischer Belinda Crawford Tamsyn Balogh-Caristo MNR Constructions Jason Lowe Neil Mallard Kylie Clarke Wigs Chameleon Touring Systems ATS Logistics
4 BACKGROUND are retained, this material may be used, reproduced, and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
5 SYNOPSIS: THE MISER Harpagon has 10,000 gold crowns buried in his backyard. He also has two children Cleante and Élise each of whom, unbeknownst to him, is in love. Cleante loves the beautiful Mariane. Élise loves Harpagon s servant Valère, who saved her from drowning. But as both Mariane and Valère are poor, Harpagon wouldn t approve of these matches, and if he knew, would cut his children off. Cleante tells Élise of his plan to secure a loan and elope. Mariane s also caught Harpagon s eye, and Harpagon reveals to Cleante he plans to marry her. He s also arranged for Cleante to marry an old, rich widow; and for Élise to marry the old, rich Signor Anselm (who happily declined a dowry) tonight! Élise is outraged. Harpagon enlists Valère to convince her to proceed with the marriage, and Élise agrees to do whatever Valère decides. To keep her position, Valère backs Harpagon, but secretly promises Élise they ll run off and elope. Cleante is still trying to secure a loan. He and his servant La Fleche arrange to meet a miserly moneylender. It turns out to be Harpagon, who s livid and suspicious at his son s spending habits. The matchmaker Frosine brings the sorrowful Mariane to Harpagon s manor, comforting her by saying that, with Harpagon s age, she ll soon be a rich widow! Meanwhile, Harpagon tricks Cleante into professing his love for Mariane. Le Fleche, incensed by Harpagon s continual rudeness, steals his moneybox from the backyard. All hell breaks loose. The conniving Master Jacques, loyal to his boss Harpagon, frames Valère. While trying to acquit herself, Valère and Élise accidently profess their love. Signor Anselm enters as Valère reveals she s from a wealthy merchant family from Naples, the rest of her family perishing in a shipwreck. Mariane realises they are sisters. Astounded, Signor Anselm reveals he is their father! Cleante takes Harpagon s moneybox hostage, demanding the right to marry Mariane. Harpagon reluctantly agrees, but he won t pay. Signor Anselm steps in and agrees to pay for both marriages. Everyone leaves, except Harpagon who s left alone with his moneybox.
6 CHARACTERS HARPAGON The miser - a hoarder of wealth who spends as little as possible FROSINE A self-interested master manipulator who plays matchmaker ÉLISE Daughter of Harpagon, in love with Valére MARIANE A young woman who Harpagon wishes to marry. In love with Cleante CLEANTE Harpagon s son, in love with Mariane VALÈRE Harpagon s chief steward, in love with Élise SIGNOR ANSELM A wealthy gentleman, suitor to Élise LA FLECHE A servant in Harpagon s household, Cleante s valet MASTER JACQUES Harpagon s cook and coachman MASTER SIMON A broker COMMISSIONER OF POLICE A policeman investigating a robbery
7 DIRECTOR S NOTE PETER EVANS I first came across Justin Fleming s adaptations of Molière s works in 2005 when I stumbled on a copy of Tartuffe that I ended up directing at Melbourne Theatre Company. Thus began my love affair with these fresh and energetic translations that so perfectly intertwined Molière s wit with an Australian sensibility. Nearly 15 years on and this will be the fifth Molière production Bell Shakespeare has presented, the previous being The School For Wives (2012), Literati (2016 co-produced with Griffin Theatre Company) and The Misanthrope (2018 co presented with Griffin Theatre Company) all directed by Lee Lewis, and Tartuffe (2014) which I was thrilled to direct. In 2015 when John Bell made the decision to step away from the role of Artistic Director, I knew then that I wanted to bring him back in a role that would be fun and engaging for him and audiences alike. I considered all the great roles that Shakespeare has to offer, but I kept coming back to this play The Miser and the role of Harpagon. John is one of Australia s acting greats, and many people recall his dramatic roles; King Lear, Richard III, Hamlet. But for me it s John s impeccable comedic timing and inherent wittiness that I love to see him bring to the stage. For this, and so many other reasons, The Miser called to be programmed, with John as its star and Justin Fleming as its translator. Molière was an actor, a manager and a writer for an ensemble. He was brave and subversive. Like Shakespeare, he knew who he was writing for and had things to say. He saw corruption, hypocrisy and pretension all around him and skewered his targets with delight. The modern sitcom owes an enormous debt to Molière. His plays often sit in a single location and take place almost in real time. They feature small social groups, like the families that are the backbone of situation comedy. His archetypes are immediately recognisable. They are almost always selfish, ambitious, careless, sometimes cruel and wonderfully human and, by the end of each play, completely loveable! Forgiveness and love drive these plays. The villains end up alone while the rest unite. Many of Molière s plays are poetic, built around rhyming couplets. To translate rhyming couplets from the French is notoriously difficult. French words are easy to rhyme. English words are not. The form can often be clunky and can slow the speed of the characters thoughts. For Molière, the form provided pace and energy. It made for good drama. The plays are rigorous yet plastic, serious yet playful. They are tightly controlled yet seemingly improvised. To tackle Molière one must be quick witted, brave and decisive. The task of the translator is to be true to the language and the form of the original work but if something of the energy and spirit is lost in translation then the work fails. Justin is a man of the theatre. He loves actors and he loves audiences. Justin has an open heart and a sense of mischief perfectly suited to translating Molière. He is respectful but not reverent. He wants to have a relationship with Molière.
8 Director Peter Evans (middle) To discover his own voice in the plays of the French master and find a way to share these remarkable works with Australians. I have had the pleasure of sitting with thousands of people in audiences all over Australia, in small regional towns and capital cities, and all have been invigorated, shocked and captivated by these works. Many have never seen a Molière play and here it is; foreign and entirely familiar, a new play yet quite clearly an old play, Australian yet undeniably French. There is a game inherent in the rhyme schemes Justin employs that creates a connection between the actor and the audience that s almost childlike in its delight. It taps into something we experience when we are first learning. As an audience, we simply cannot predict the end of the line. Sometimes we get there just before the character and feel close to them; we are in their head, we are with their thoughts. Sometimes the rhyme is not what we expect, and this surprise carries another kind of connection as we delight in being wrong footed. This extremely self-conscious form of dialogue places us continuously in our own conversation with the characters and the play but like a tennis match where we are never entirely sure how it will resolve. Our production sets us firmly in the world of the 1%. A fantasy, or perhaps only mildly fantastic lampooning of the entitled ultra-rich. A world where money is a way of keeping score. Where money is not shared or for anything other than protection against the outside world but where, ironically, the hoarding of money produces only paranoia and fear. Those in our sights I think will be obvious but we satirise in the spirit of Molière, with lightness, warmth and humour yet with a sting in our tail/tale. With John Bell and Justin Fleming at the heart of this production, and an astoundingly talented ensemble of actors to play with them both, The Miser has a unique voice that allows us to connect with the work of Molière afresh but also to offer a distinctive Australian twist. A combination that I think will delight many across the country.
9 FROM THE WRITER, JUSTIN FLEMING Justin Fleming A NOTE ON THE RHYME SCHEME Molière preferred to write in verse, but after his tuberculosis had given him a permanent, nagging cough, it made it difficult for him as an actor to speak the full line. Hence, The Miser was written in prose, with shared lines and fewer long speeches. This version is in verse because our audiences have come to prefer and expect it. When Molière wrote in verse, he used rhyming couplets throughout, as his audience was used to them, and in French they have less intensity than in English. So, for variety s sake, and to give characters and themes their breathing space, in scenes principally about love, I have used rhyming couplets (AABB). When the main theme is miserliness, the rhymes are on alternate lines (ABAB). Scenes of intrigue (e.g. Frosine, Anselm) have the rhyme on the first and fourth lines, and second and third lines (ABBA). The advantage is that the audience does not settle into any easy expectation. The responsibility for this novel approach is my own and I thank Bell Shakespeare director, Peter Evans, for his trust in this approach, and Michael Worton, Fielden Professor of French Language and Literature at University College London for giving me the thumbs up.
10 ARTICLE MY ADVENTURES WITH MOLIÈRE BY JUSTIN FLEMING This is an edited extract of the article My Adventures with Molière by Justin Fleming, originally published on Saturday 4 August, 2018 in The Sydney Morning Herald. My first foray into adapting a French classic for the stage was Zola s Au Bonheur des Dames, which I called The Department Store, produced by Parnassus Den Theatre Company at the Old Fitzroy in Sydney, successfully directed by Christopher Hurrell. Some time later, Bell Shakespeare asked me if I were interested in translating Molière s Tartuffe. In approaching a translation of a Molière play in verse, I was struck by a sense of relentless rhyming couplets. This was not a problem for a French audience as they were used to them and in French they have less intensity: the reason being that it is easier to rhyme in French. Unlike English, French repeats a comparatively limited number of word endings, and though spellings are different, the sound is often the same a feature shared with English. My concern was for the ear of a modern Australian audience, with most of us unaccustomed to rhyming plays. French has about 100,000 words in usage and English has 172,000 approaching twice the vocabulary. A reason for this is that English has, with an almost lecherous lingual lust, acquired words from Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Celts (Welsh, Irish, Bretons), Old Norse, Normans (which, e.g., gave us mug, with all its colourful Australian meanings), Dutch, Italian, Indian, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, Latin, Greek and, yes, French. Yet despite this rich variety, to avoid the intensity of five acts of rhyming couplets, most translators deliver the text in blank verse the rhythm but not the rhyme. I did consider this option, but I felt it may deny an Australian audience our innate joy of rhyme. As an experiment, I made a bold decision: to vary the rhyming scheme. I had spent a wonderful year of postgraduate study at University College London, and it so happened that Michael Worton, Fielden Professor of French Language and Literature at UCL visited Sydney when I had finished a draft of Tartuffe with this adventurous rhyming scheme. Over a drink in the Rocks, he generously agreed to read the translation on the train to Canberra the next day. He then sent me an email: Go for it! To illustrate, when translating The Misanthrope, this is how I varied the rhyming scheme: Where the scene is principally about insincerity, I have used the rhyming couplets (AABB). When the main thrust is brutal truth, the rhymes are on alternate lines (ABAB). Where the subject is love, the rhymes fall on the first and fourth lines,
11 and the second and third lines (ABBA). Where letters are read, I use the couplets. The advantage is that the audience stops knowing where the rhyme will land and listens to what is being said. When the rhyme does arrive, it s a kind of pay-off. French people are curious about why exactly Molière is so popular in Australia. I believe it is because Australians have several things in common with Molière: a mistrust for the pillars of society, a loathing of hypocrisy and a distaste for the extreme. All of the plays I have translated have at least one, if not all, of these protests as their theme, and this is why they have continuing relevance to modern Australians. There is something else, too. Molière gives a voice to those who are under the thumb of a higher power and it is a daring voice for reason, wisdom, moderation. His working class women, for example, are a momentous moral force and Molière gives them huge roles. When Lee Lewis asked me if Alceste, the misanthrope, could be a woman, I asked myself: What would Molière say if he were right here, right now? The answer came back: Vas-y, fais-le! Go for it!
12 BELL SHAKESPEARE AND MOLIÈRE: A HISTORY SO FAR are retained, this material may be used, reproduced, and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
13 BELL SHAKESPEARE AND MOLIÈRE: A HISTORY SO FAR This is the fifth time Bell Shakespeare has collaborated with Justin Fleming on adaptations of Molière s plays. The School For Wives 2012 (National Tour) Directed by Lee Lewis Tartuffe 2014 Directed by Peter Evans Brett Boardman The Literati 2016 Directed by Lee Lewis (co-production with Griffin Theatre Company) Lisa Tomasetti The Misanthrope 2018 Directed by Lee Lewis Daniel Boud Brett Boardman
14 FACT SHEETS are retained, this material may be used, reproduced, and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
15 WHO WAS MOLIÈRE? Molière was born in Paris in 1622, and christened Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. He was the son of a Parisian merchant. Drawn to theatre, he left his family s upholstery business at the age of 21 to pursue a life on the stage. Molière was not afraid to fail. In fact, his first theatre company the Illustre Théâtre went bankrupt within just two years. To make things worse, he was put into debtors prison for a short while. Molière got his first break when the King s brother secured a him a performance in front of King Louis XIV. King Louis loved his play The Doctor In Love so much that he allowed Molière to use the Petit-Bourbon, a prestigious hall next to the Louvre Palace. It was in this hall that Molière s plays gained popularity with the Parisian public. The playwright s career was characterised by a series of critical hits and misses. The work Dom Garcie de Navarre was initially a failure, while L École des maris and Les Fâcheux were both very successful. The Miser was actually a spectacular failure when it was first staged in 1668! The King agreed to be Godfather to Molière s first-born child in 1664. Molière s plays were often inspired by events in his life. The School for Wives is supposedly a reflection of his own marriage as a forty-year-old to the teenager Armande Béjart. The play is a comedy about forty-two-year-old Arnolphe grooming the young Agnès for marriage. A number of Molière s works encountered powerful opposition from the church. His play Tartuffe was prohibited from being performed in public in 1664. A revised edition was produced in 1667. However, this version was also heavily criticised by the church, and parliament banned it until 1669. Though an accomplished writer and actor, Molière was no horse whisperer! In a 1670 season of La Gouvernance de Sanche Pança, he was supposed to enter the stage riding a donkey. During one performance, the donkey decided to enter the stage several scenes early. Molière, unable to deter the animal, allowed it to wander onstage throughout the show to perform whatever scene it deemed appropriate. Molière preferred to write in verse. However, after contracting tuberculosis, he developed a persistent cough which made it difficult for him to speak the full verse line when acting. As a result, The Miser was first written in prose. Molière died whilst playing the character of the hypochondriac Argan in The Imaginary Invalid in 1673. During the fourth performance of the show, he suffered a coughing fit and passed away later that evening.
16 At the time of his death, the church required all those working in theatre to denounce their profession prior to their death. As Molière did not, he was denied a Christian burial. Due to having favour with the King he was buried in a Christian graveyard, but without the last rites administered by priests. His jawbone was displayed at the Museum of French Antiquities, given as a gift by Dr. Jules Cloquet in 1860. The Miser rehearsals Prudence Upton
17 SHAKESPEARE VS MOLIÈRE: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES In the modern day, Molière is considered to be The Father of French Comedy. His significance in France is often compared to Shakespeare s significance in England. But apart from their works earning a place in Western literature s canon, how similar are these playwrights? KEY SIMILARITIES: They both played instrumental roles in running theatre companies. They enjoyed patronage from the royal family of their respective countries. They acted in their own plays. Their works are both still enormously popular and are performed all over the world today. Both men are the subject of films. William Shakespeare has been portrayed in many films including the fictional comedy Shakespeare In Love written by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman (1998). A French film titled Molière was released in 2007 and used elements of Molière s plays to weave a fictional account of his life. It is theorised that both Shakespeare and Molière used the work of Plautus (a Roman dramatist) as inspiration for their plays, The Comedy of Errors and Amphitryon. It s possible to see similarities between the works both are farces that involve mistaken identity and include a double-up of servants and masters. It is possible to see a number of similar plot devices in Shakespeare and Molière s work. For example, if one examines Twelfth Night and The Miser, both narratives include siblings separated by a shipwreck, only to be reunited at the end to enjoy happy marriages. KEY DIFFERENCES: Molière had a wealthy upbringing and was educated in law prior to pursuing a career in theatre. By comparison, Shakespeare came from humble beginnings. His father had many jobs such as a glovemaker and local statesman. Shakespeare never went to university, though he did attend a grammar school until around the age of fifteen. Shakespeare married at eighteen to Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior. Molière married at the age of forty to Armande Béjart who was only seventeen at the time.
18 Shakespeare s plays were set in the past and were often based on history and influenced by mythology. This allowed Shakespeare to comment on matters closer to home through the lens of other lands and times (much less risky than commenting directly on the behaviour of current English Kings and Queens!) Molière s plays were set in France and in the time that they were written, and often examine contemporary social dynamics. Molière was met with far harsher criticism and censorship than Shakespeare, possibly as a result of the contemporary nature of his work. Many critics suppose that Molière was only able to produce such controversial works because of his friendship with King Louis XIV. Molière wished to be a tragic actor but this didn t align with the tastes of 17th century France, so he wrote satirical comedies. He was said to have a natural inclination for comedy, and his performing ability influenced the way he wrote his plays (as he wrote characters that he would be able to play well). While Shakespeare wrote many comedies, he is arguably best known for his tragedies including Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello and Romeo and Juliet. The Miser rehearsals Prudence Upton
19 WHAT IS SATIRE? Satire is a genre of literature in which exaggeration, irony, and often humour are used to highlight the weaknesses and vices of characters. In doing so, satire often makes comment on humanity and society as a whole, holding up our preoccupations and values for ridicule. When highlighted in such a way, human behaviours and values appear foolish, laughable or shocking. The power of satire is the impact it has on its unsuspecting audience. We laugh or shake our heads at the apparent foolishness of the characters or situation presented, and then later realise it is making serious comment on ourselves and our society. Molière used satire in his plays to exaggerate and shed light on a number of human behaviours and values. These include: The behaviours of different classes, ie. bourgeois vs lower class The institution of marriage Wealth and our relationship with money Our relationship with material things The role of religion in society and our lives The different roles and expectations of men and women in society Satire comes in many different forms and is employed through many different means. Some of the main techniques of satire are: Exaggeration To enlarge something beyond what is considered normal, so that it becomes ridiculous. When behaviours, values or attributes are increased in this way, faults and wrongdoings become obvious. This includes caricature, as seen in many political cartoons today. Parody Parody is a direct imitation of a person, place, behaviour or thing. Parody is very popular in modern entertainment through film, songs, and sketch comedy. Reversal Reversing events, behaviours or chronological order to show the exact opposite. Sometimes social hierarchy is reversed to draw attention to the roles we place on others. Incongruity Presenting something or a type of behaviour that seems out of place to the normal or expected way of things. This makes them seem strange or absurd.
20 EXAMPLES OF MODERN SATIRE Satire remains hugely popular in entertainment and news reporting, since Moliere s time. Examples include: Books 1984, Animal Farm both by George Orwell Terry Pratchett s sci-fi books Gulliver s Travels by Jonathan Swift The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde The Princess Bride by William Goldman Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith TV Shows The Daily Show (US) Frontline (AUS) South Park (US) Black Mirror (UK) The Office (UK + US) Blackadder (UK) Yes, Minister (UK) The Chaser s War on Everything (AUS) Film Dr Strangelove (1964) The Great Dictator (1940) Austin Powers (1997) Tropic Thunder (2008) The Truman Show (1998) Wag The Dog (1997) Officespace (1999) Zoolander (2001)
21 Music Weird Al Yankovic (parody artist using popular songs) Randy Rainbow (modern political satirist) Satirical News Popular today are satirical news outlets. These websites feature fictional news articles laughable in their content, yet take inspiration from real-life news. Some people even confuse satirical articles with the truth. Examples include: The Onion (US) The Betoota Advocate (AUS) The Shovel (AUS) The Miser rehearsals Prudence Upton
22 The Miser rehearsals Prudence Upton The Miser rehearsals Prudence Upton
23 PRODUCTION DESIGNS BY ANNA TREGLOAN Costume design by Anna Tregloan
24 Set design by Anna Tregloan
25 REFERENCES are retained, this material may be used, reproduced, and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
26 REFERENCES Banham, M 2000, The Cambridge Guide to Theater (2nd ed.) Cambridge University Press. Cambridge UK. Calder, A 2000, Molière: The Theory and Practice of Comedy, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, UK. Call, M. J 2011, Money for Nothing: Molière s Miser and the Risky World of Early Modern France, Quidditas, vol. 32, pp. 8 29. Hawcroft, M 2000, Molière: Reasoning With Fools, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Howatson, M.C & Chilvers, I 1996, The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Grimarest, J.L 1962, Vie de M. de Molière, M. Brient, Paris, France. Leon, M 2009, Molière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife, University Of Iowa Press, Iowa City, USA. Tobin, R & Moore, W 2017, Molière: French Dramatist, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, USA.