In November 2007 Gemma Bodinetz, the director of the Liverpool Playhouse, said
how apt it would be if I were to write a show for the theatre to be
performed during the city’s Capital of Culture year. Something European with
a “Liverpool heartbeat”. Perhaps adapting Molière for the stage.
Molière? I didn’t think so. Having skimmed through a handful of his plays
while reading for a degree in schoolboy French at Hull University I couldn’t
imagine how his refined 17th-century sensibilities would appeal to a
contemporary audience. So I posted a couple of my own play scripts that had
yet to see the light of stage and awaited her enthusiastic response. None
was forthcoming.
Bodinetz would not be fobbed off and when we met at the beginning of 2008 I
promised to toy with Tartuffe (bearing in mind that Liverpool “heartbeat”,
which she explained as wit, warmth and accessiblity, and in no way a
translation into Scouse), while employed as poet-in-residence on a Saga
cruise from Southampton to Antigua. With only two shows a week I would have
plenty of time to think up excuses as to why I had failed to unlock the key
to this 350-year-old French farce.
Molière, whose real name was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, was born in Paris in 1622
to prosperous middle-class parents (his father was upholsterer to the King).
Having rejected the furniture business, Poquelin set up a theatre company,
renting a real tennis court to use as a stage, and changing his name. After
a stint in jail for debt (the tennis court was expensive) and more than a
decade of touring the provinces, he returned to Paris, winning the patronage
of King Louis XIV’s brother Philippe, marrying a 19-year-old girl, and
writing a series of bitingly satiricial farces.
Most of Molière’s comedies are about human obsession and in the case of
Tartuffe it is religion, or, rather, lack of it. It is obvious to everyone
except Orgon, the master of the house, that Tartuffe — an apparently pious
man — is out to seduce Orgon’s wife, Elmire, marry his daughter and steal
his house and all that he possesses. Eventually, thanks to Antoinette, the
wise and witty maid, disaster is averted.
I didn’t take a version of Molière’s original French text with me — I would
refer to that later — but a direct prose translation plus various verse
adaptations. It crossed my mind while crossing the Bay of Biscay to
cherry-pick from each adaptation and produce a cento to pass off as my own,
but my strict Roman Catholic upbringing and fear of being exposed as a
plagiarist knocked that one on the head. Whether it was salt-sea air or the
gentle rocking of the ship I’m not sure, but once I gave voice to Orgon’s
mother, the indomitable Mme Pernelle, in the opening scene I was hooked.
Elmire: But Mother, why the unseemly haste?
Mme Pernelle: Because we feel displaced.
One is obviously in the way. One is bored.
No one cares about one. One is ignored.
Compared to this house, Bedlam’s an oasis.
A madhouse, that’s what this place is.
Back on dry land, I repaired to Mount Pleasant, an artists’ retreat in
Reigate, where I mulled over the original French text, compared it with what
I was concocting, and convinced myself that the man himself would have
approved. The characters were so clearly drawn, and the plot, though often
creaking, was still believable within the context of the play’s world, so I
was free to concentrate simply on rhyme. Suddenly, all those years spent in
a lonely garret writing verse paid off.
For all the knockabout comedy, with its theme of religious hypocrisy Molière’s
play proved controversial: it was banned by Louis XIV for undermining the
foundations of religion and denounced by the Church as being the work of “a
demon in human flesh”. So to mollify his critics and get the show back on
the road Molière entrusted (some would say saddled) his character Cleante —
Orgon’s brother-in-law — with long speeches about hypocrisy and devotion.
This is where that old-style Catholic religion came to my aid as I set out
to make Cléante a voice of reason rather than a fundamentalist with
logorrhoea. Though hardly God-fearing, Molière was a regular churchgoer and
his target was not religion, but pretence and bigotry.
Twelve months later, another Saga cruise, another Molière adaptation. This
time Le Malade Imaginaire, or The Hypochondriac. Written in 1673, it is a
trickier job for the adapter, because, ironically, the writer collapsed on
stage while performing it in front of the king. He played Argan, a wealthy
gentleman, in good health but convinced that he is seriously ill. So
selfobsessed is he that he is blind to the unhappiness of his daughter and
the web of deceit spun by his second wife, Beline, a would-be rich widow.
Again it is the sharp-witted servant girl who saves the day. Something of a
hypochondriac himself, Molière hated quacks with a vengeance, but vengeance
was theirs when they refused to attend his sickbed, and he died two days
later. So, do I re-present the original text (sans the theatrical diversions
inserted to please his royal majesty)? Or do I introduce the fatal coup de
grâce? We shall see.
This time, none of the adaptations I took on board employed rhyme. However,
the opening speech in which Argan examines his medical bills begged to be
versified:
Now where was I? “Item of the 22nd . . .
To lubricate bowel and make it fecund.
To scour gut until clean as a whistle, With abrasive enema of nettle and
thistle.
Administered with tube, long and rubbery, 30 sols.” Thirty sols? That’s
daylight robbery.
After a fortnight at sea I returned to Reigate and Le Malade in the original
French, and made a discovery. Molière had not used verse, as he did for
Tartuffe, but had written this scathingly funny lampoon in prose. I was far
too immersed in the play to go back and, besides, the verse was flowing, so
with the author’s permission I carried on.
My intention has always been to do justice to Molière’s work so that on
leaving the theatre the audience doesn’t think it has spent two hours in the
company of a poet and a group of actors dressed in period costume, but in
the salons of 17th-century Paris, where the threads of affectation,
snobbery, wit and good sense are interwoven by that master craftsman,
JeanBaptiste Poquelin.
The Hypochondriac by Roger McGough after Molière, the Everyman Playhouse,
Liverpool, June 19 to July 11 (0151-709 4776; everymanplayhouse.com). For
touring information contact www.ett.org.uk
