THE HYPOCHONDRIAC To 14 November.

Tour.

THE HYPOCHONDRIAC
by Molière adapted by Roger McGough.

English Touring Theatre Tour to 14 November 2009.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 July at Liverpool Playhouse..

Middling Molière production scripted by highly mischievous McGough.
Following its summer opening at Liverpool Playhouse, Molière’s dramatic swansong packs its bags (presumably including a dollop of travel-sickness pills) to tour through autumn for co-producers English Touring Theatre. The playwright’s last laugh was at his pet hatred, doctors. Or maybe the medics laughed last, for he died onstage performing the central role. Roger McGough opens by presenting chief character Argan as Molière in his theatre. But the idea never recurs, its sawn-off existence a puzzle.

Argan is another Molière obsessive making multiple misjudgements while a (largely) loving family and ultra-sensible friend attempt to reason with him. Clive Francis shows him both besotted with and afraid of doctors, screwing-up his features – in a manner recalling earlier Molière fun-figure, the miser Harpagon – at their bills or in loathing at their painful prescriptions (with friends like these who needs enemas?).

McGough’s technique throughout is the quick joke, at which he’s highly adept – usually verbal in verse that can chuck rhymes in adjacent words or keep them twenty syllables apart, but often visual, and often fundamentally erupting from bodily fluids and functions. As with last year’s McGough Molière, Tartuffe, there are running (occasionally flagging) jokes and linguistic switches between French, English and occasionally German.

But where Tartuffe flamed, The Hypochondriac smoulders. The play itself is less riveting, with no high-spots like the discovery of Tartuffe’s villainy, with its consequences. And, like that other medic-basher Bernard Shaw, Molière lived before frequently effective free-at-delivery, high-tech medicine. (Though, if Tamiflu applications fall-off when this production visits, the playwright’s argument will be reinforced.)

So McGough's ingenuity comes over all icing, no cake, with Gemma Bodinetz’s direction heaping comic devices on the action. It’s best when simplest, as in Leanne Best’s sensible servant, doubling as an Italian doctor with Dario Fo-like obviousness (unsurprising, since Fo drew on the same comic sources as Molière). For the rest, well, mock-opera has to be done more skilfully than in the Magic Flute passage here. But there are compensations, including a reference to McGough’s days in Merseyside musical group The Scaffold, and their Lily the Pink with her widely efficacious medicinal compound.

Toinette: Leanne Best.
Diaforius: Neil Caple.
Beralde: Simon Coates.
Thomas: Toby Dantzic.
Argan: Clive Francis.
Cleante: Jake Harders.
Bonnefoi/Monsieur Fleurant/Doctor Purgeon: Chris Porter.
Angelique: Lucinda Raikes.
Beline: Brigid Zengani.

Director: Gemma Bodinetz.
Designer: Mike Britton.
Lighting: Charles Balfour.
Sound: Jason Barnes.
Composer: Conor Linehan.
Movement: Bernadette Iglich.
Associate director: Lisa Spirling.

2009-08-25 21:20:44