THE look of love beams like a laser from Brian Bedford's eyes in the handsome, absorbing new production of Molière's "Tartuffe" that opened last night at the American Airlines Theater. It's that glazed, honeyed gaze found among men who, having surprised themselves by falling in love in their autumn years, have also fallen into a dream. Mr. Bedford's character, a bourgeois gentilhomme named Orgon, looks so happily enchanted that it seems almost a shame that he has to be awakened. Mind you, the creature who has so captivated Orgon is not your usual midlife-crisis-making bosomy blonde, but a bony brunette with stringy hair and a pasty complexion. This gold digger — a fellow known as Tartuffe, by the way — is portrayed with ghoulishly zestful appetite by Henry Goodman.

Before we proceed, let it be recorded that in the early 21st century Henry Goodman did indeed have the chance to play a flamboyant, fast-talking con man on Broadway and that he did so with flair, inventiveness and comic assurance. Mr. Goodman, you may recall, became the subject of last season's most dramatic theatrical imbroglio when he was dismissed from the comic role of another flamboyant con man.

The part was Max Bialystock, created for the musical "The Producers" by Nathan Lane, an audience-hijacking performer whose shoes no one should ever have to step into. But that was the task assigned to Mr. Goodman, a celebrated actor of the London stage, who jumped into the role and was summarily yanked from it after four weeks, before critics had a chance to review him.

Having now seen Mr. Goodman's charismatic, eely Tartuffe, who brings to mind John Barrymore being sinister in a silent movie, I have to say that I feel cheated by having missed his Max. But that, as they say, is another oil slick under the bridge. And it is New York's good fortune now to have Mr. Goodman strutting his stuff in high, nasty style in the title role of Molière's classic play about religious charlatanism.

Not that Mr. Goodman entirely owns this "Tartuffe," which has been mounted with 17th-century savoir-faire by Joe Dowling, the artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and the set designer John Lee Beatty. If Molière's spirited comic fable has more psychological credibility than usual in this production from the Roundabout Theater — which also features J. Smith-Cameron and Kathryn Meisle — it owes even more to Mr. Bedford's plump pigeon than it does to Mr. Goodman's sharp-beaked bird of prey.

The problem with most interpretations of "Tartuffe" lies in their failure to convince the audience that a blatant mountebank like the title character — a man of pious poses, Jesuitical speech and conspicuous lust — could deceive anyone, even such a fatuous fellow as Orgon, who has brought this serpent into the bosom of his family as a spiritual guide. After all, Tartuffe isn't loath to show his true, darker colors to almost everyone else in Orgon's household. Just how gullible can a gull be?

Still, anyone who has watched a man of, say, some 50 or 60 years — with his children grown and the grave in his foreseeable future — suddenly start clutching at signs of new life will recognize Mr. Bedford's Orgon. Some men buy red sports cars; some acquire new wives with silicone breasts. This Orgon brings the same desperately hopeful spirit, tinged with eroticism, to his pursuit of religious enlightenment.

The truly wondrous Mr. Bedford, who delivered another dazzling profile in fatuity in the Roundabout's "London Assurance" in 1997, turns Orgon into a beatific study in denial. Rather than the usual stuffy, tyrannical paterfamilias of most productions of "Tartuffe," Mr. Bedford's Orgon has a malleable sweetness. (When you see him backing away from his aged mother, played with dragonlike fierceness by Rosaleen Linehan, you get a glimpse of what shaped him.) It makes sense that this fellow, probably troubled by new thoughts of mortality and regrets about his past, would fall into the crafty hands of a poseur promising redemption. And Mr. Goodman, while guilty of a few instances of forced comic shtick, cannily plays Tartuffe as a Svengali who has by now so thoroughly hypnotized his victim that he knows exactly how much he can get away with.

At such moments, Orgon and Tartuffe might indeed have stepped straight from those incisive paintings of politicians and men of wealth by LeBrun, portraits that invariably inspire speculations on the scheming personalities of their subjects. This would appear to have been Mr. Dowling's overall intention with this "Tartuffe," which is set firmly in the mid-17th century and has been given ravishingly detailed physical life.

Mr. Beatty, who created the knockout Deco-style sets for the current Lincoln Center production of "Dinner at Eight," does similarly impressive duty here, rendering Orgon's Paris town house as a wood-paneled, ormolu-accented temple to haute bourgeois affluence, perfectly matched by Brian MacDevitt's painterly lighting and Jane Greenwood's frilled costumes.

Not everyone inhabits this environment — or Richard Wilbur's standard rhymed translation — with the same ease that Mr. Bedford does. There are those inevitable, numbing moments when the moralizing, singsong quality of recited poetry descends. But it's an agreeable supporting cast, and everyone has his or her moment to shine. It's a pleasure to see the throaty Ms. Smith-Cameron (of "As Bees in Honey Drown") back on stage, bringing genuine warmth to the somewhat tedious role of Dorine, the plucky, truth-speaking maid.

As Orgon's delectable wife, Ms. Meisle, who brings to mind the vulpine slyness of the young Annette Bening, does wonderfully by the famous seduction scene in which Tartuffe is entrapped. And Jeffrey Carlson, recently seen as the troubled son in "The Goat," manages to find fresh ways of communicating adolescent angst through Baroque frippery as the suitor of Orgon's daughter, Mariane (the charming Bryce Dallas Howard).

But it's Mr. Goodman and Mr. Bedford who provide the surprises of emotional shading that make this more than just another attractively upholstered revival. Mr. Bedford, in particular, discovers an almost tragic pathos in this oft-revisited comedy.

When Orgon is finally delivered from evil (in a deus ex machina that is presented with a perfect balance of irony and wonder here), he doesn't look entirely happy. In fact, the last expression seen on Mr. Bedford's face is that of a man who has just been banished from paradise and can't figure out why.

TARTUFFE
By Molière; translation by Richard Wilbur; directed by Joe Dowling; sets by John Lee Beatty; costumes by Jane Greenwood; lighting by Brian MacDevitt; original music and sound by Mark Bennett; dialect coach, Elizabeth Smith; production stage manager, Jane Pole; hair and wig design by Paul Huntley; associate artistic director, Scott Ellis; technical supervisor, Steve Beers; general manager, Sydney Davolos; director of marketing, David B. Steffen. Presented by the Roundabout Theater Company, Todd Haimes, artistic director; Ellen Richard, managing director; Julia C. Levy, executive director, external affairs. At the American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street, Manhattan.

WITH: Brian Bedford (Orgon), Henry Goodman (Tartuffe), J. Smith-Cameron (Dorine), Rosaleen Linehan (Mme. Pernelle), Kathryn Meisle (Elmire), T. R. Knight (Damis), Bryce Dallas Howard (Mariane), John Bedford Lloyd (Cléante), Jeffrey Carlson (Valère) and Philip Goodwin (M. Loyal).

Fuente: The New York Times
Enero 2003