Everywhere a Molière
| ALCESTE DOES NOT RETURN HER SMILE: Robert Wu ’97 and Claire Qualter in a scene from The Misanthrope. (Jon Crispin photo) |
Sometimes when you translate French, says playwright CONSTANCE CONGDON ’82G, “Everyone comes out sounding like they’re in a Woody Allen movie.” Congdon’s versification of Molière’s The Misanthrope reworks into “late 20th century American English” a new prose translation by theater professor VIRGINIA SCOTT. This Misanthrope was staged last fall in the Curtain Theater and also in San Francisco at the American Conservatory Theater. The UMass production was directed by Scott in a “simple, abstract, elegant” concert version. A faculty development grant allowed her to bring alumnus Robert Wu ’97 from New York City to play the lead role of Alceste – the misanthropic man of letters, described this way by his romantic opposite
The issue could be profane or ethical,
He’ll take whatever side is antithetical.
You see, he would be seen as commonplace
If he returned the smile on someone’s face.
Meantime, in a nice bit of symmetry, Scott’s book, Molière: A Theatrical Life, was published this fall by Cambridge University Press.
