That Bible-thumping scoundrel Tartuffe is once again bound and determined to rob a wealthy family blind, albeit this time in the big-haired, big-shouldered 1980s, in Tartuffe: Born Again, Freyda Thomas’s Baton Rouge-set translation of the 1664 Moliere classic, now tickling audience funny bones under Topanga skies at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum.

Thomas’s adaptation introduces us to smooth-talking televangelist Tartuffe (David DeSantos), who like countless Tartuffes before him has infiltrated himself into the good graces of Orgon (Lynn Robert Berg), reimagined here as a local TV station owner.

A onetime vagrant turned pious fraud with more than mischief in mind, Tartuffe plans not only to seduce Orgon’s wife and daughter but to take ownership of his host’s entire fortune and property in the process.

 Orgon’s Louisiana-drawling family members are, perhaps not surprisingly, concerned about Tartuffe’s influence over their patriarch, among them Orgon’s considerably younger second wife Elmire (Michelle Jasso), his imperious Southern matriarch mother Mrs. Pernelle (Cynthia Kania), his brother-in-law Cléante (Jonathan Blandino), his daughter Maryann (Isabel Stallings), his son Damis (understudy Timothy Willard), and Marianne’s beau Valere (Ethan Haslam).

Housekeeper Dorine (Tanya Alexander), meanwhile, has plenty to say about the matter, none of it good, while Tartuffe’s trio of personal assistants (understudy Blaire Battle, Shoshanna Green, and Rebecca Oca-Nussbaum) seem more than happy to attend to their master’s every wish, that is when they’re not harmonizing as the preacher man’s girl-group trio of backup singers.

Thomas’s fast-forwarding of the action from 1660s France to 1980s Louisiana is inspired, and not just because Southern accents (as any Del Shores or Designing Women fan will tell you) lend themselves particularly well to comedy.

The ’80s were also the decade when Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson ruled the born-again Christian TV airwaves, and with his Eddie Van Halen mullet, black pleather jacket, and matching skin-tight pants, DeSantos’s Tartuffe seems every bit as primed as his real-life counterparts to bilk the dumb and the dumber.

All of this adds up to a Tartuffe that keeps the laughs coming virtually nonstop, and never more than in one of the wildest would-be seductions ever, with Elmire contriving to get Tartuffe to put the moves on her as her husband waits patiently (albeit uncomfortably) under the table on which the planned seduction is to take place.

Director Melora Marshall elicits one absolutely delicious performance after another, beginning with an on-fire DeSantos, oozing slimy sex appeal like the snake Tartuffe is, Jasso, whose Elmire sizzles like Julia and Suzanne Sugarbaker combined, and Berg, hilarious as the hoodwinked Orgon.

Alexander is a sassy fourth-wall-breaking delight as the ever-observant Dorine, Blandino does his accustomed terrific work as Cleante, whose attempts at reasoning with Tartuffe prove fruitless, and Kania carries on the tradition of Southern grandmotherhood to do Tennessee Williams or nighttime soap Dallas proud.

As for the younger set, Stallings is pretty blonde Southern maiden perfection, Haslam is dashing as all get-out as her lovestruck suitor, and in his very first time out as Damis, and Willard steals every scene he’s in as a mop-headed, roller-skating, pratfalling goofball.

Sky Wahl (De Salle) and Ted Dane (Agent Loyal) make topnotch eleventh-hour appearances as (respectively) an appraiser sent to calculate the worth of Orgon’s assets and a G-man investigating a swindler who goes by the name of Tartuffe, and Battle, Green, and Oca-Nussbaum are the harmonizing backup singers every televangelist needs to get his message across and keep the donations coming in.

Vicki Conrad has designed a fabulous array 1980s costumes, with special snaps to quite possibly the most blindingly bright shocking-pink man’s suit ever, Hayden Kirschbaum’s lighting gets gorgeouser and gorgeouser as night falls over Topanga, Ian Geatz’s set and prop designs convert Theatricum Botanicum’s permanent outdoor set into assorted Baton Rouge locales to ingenious effect, and sound designer Grant Escandón and composers The McDaniel Brothers deliver everything a Christian TV station owner like Orgon could wish for.

Berber Heerema is assistant director. Karen Osborne is stage manager and Amayah Watson is assistant stage manager. Beth Eslick is wardrobe supervisor. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

Tartuffe has been bilking easily duped fools for the past 360 years, and thank goodness he hasn’t stopped yet. The rollicking romp that is Tartuffe: Born Again ought to top any theatergoer’s list of reasons to put an outdoor evening at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum on this summer’s must-do list.

Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga.
www.theatricum.com

–Steven Stanley
August 11, 2024
Photos: Ian Flanders

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Moliere, Theatricum Botanicum