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Chaos reigns when an impostor works his way into a family as a preacher on how they should all live virtuous lives. But he has ulterior purposes - not least being designs on the married lady of the house and her husband's considerable fortune. This timeless comedy by Moliere is here adapted by Justin Fleming in what The Age called 'a great achievement, intelligent and entertaining.'
'What a novel way to tart up a dusty seventeenth-century play, a favourite with Louis XIV. Not that it was necessary to vulgarise Tartuffe, Molière’s title for the play. Justin Fleming had already done a fabulous job of translating the original, capturing the earthy quality of the French with contemporary Australian slang and references.' Carol Middleton, AustralianStage, Nov 2008
'Likeable, funny, clever, spectacular. Justin Fleming's translation owes a lot to Byron, with its long lines and crazy rhymes ... Immensely good fun. Chris Boyd, The Herald Sun, Nov 2008
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Male | Unspecified | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 17
EXTRACT: I am not at all an oracle, even less a Socrates./I don't have all the answers. I know you like to mock. But these/ Are questions of judgment: what is false and what is true;/ And searching for that difference is what we all must do./ There's nothing that I value more than a truly honest mind,/ And the passion of a true belief is something that I find/ Inspiring. At the same time, there's nothing I hate more/ Than a sanctimonious liar or evangelistic bore;
Male | Unspecified | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 40
EXTRACT: Ah! I may be devout, but I'm every inch a man!/ For when we set our eyes on the most heavenly of charms,/ Reason deserts us utterly, and leaves us in the arms/ Of a very natural force, with its own mind, and plan./ Oh Madame, I'm no angel; I'm human, and of male gender,/ And if you will condemn the frank confession I have made,/ You must also condemn your charms; it's through them I have strayed.
Female | Unspecified | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 55
EXTRACT: Oh, if you'd let that little knockback put you off your game,/ You don't know much about women and what keeps their heart aflame./ Don't you realise what is really meant by an unconvincing "No."/ Our sense of shame can be at war with our desire, you know,/ One voice, that of reason, wants to tame this urge to love,/ While another voice whispers gently: What are you frightened of?
Season 2014 - SYDNEY | 26 July – 23 August Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre
A handy guide to bluffing your way through!
Andy McLean writes about dollars and divinity in Molière’s 'Tartuffe'
"According to Evans, the way Tartuffe looks at hypocrisy and the relationship between religion and money is as pertinent as it’s ever been."
"What a novel way to tart up a dusty seventeenth-century play, a favourite with Louis XIV."
"...The cheerful success of Justin Fleming’s version, in a lively production by Peter Evans, is a considerable achievement. Fleming has translated it all into thumping English verse with an Australian and often scatalogical vernacular that is clever and funny. Just listening to the performers deliver it would be entertainment enough."
"This is Bell Shakespeare at it’s best – smart, funny, relevant, epic, sexy, saucy, cheeky, brutal fun."
"Fleming’s adaptation is as sophisticated as it is bracing. He has ripped into Molière’s original with gusto, whisking us off on a hysterical journey of rhyming verse."
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