Tartuffe (★★★★)

by Moliere
adapted by Justin Fleming
Black Swan State Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company
Directed by Kate Cherry
Designed by Richard Roberts
Lighting designer David Murray
Sound designer Tony Brumpton
With Jenny Davis, Darren Gilshenan, Tessa Lind, Hugh Parker, James Sweeny, Steve Turner, Alison van Reeken, Emily Weir and Alex Williams
Heath Ledger Theatre
Until November 6

En garde! Emily Weir and Steve Turner

We’re in a ritzy two-story house in an affluent Australian suburb (an eminently liveable set by Richard Roberts). There’s a party going on.
It’s Moliere’s Tartuffe, but the house, the people in it, and the language they use, are straight out of David Williamson.
Justin Fleming’s adaptation of the great French comedy of extremely bad manners doesn’t tamper with the characters and their station in life, or the arrangement of the text.
That takes a little getting used to. Rhyming couplets, of which the dialogue in Moliere and Fleming’s adaptation is composed, can seem to our unaccustomed ears like pantomime doggerel.
But the director Kate Cherry and her cast take on the audience’s early qualms with heedless confidence, and it pays off.

Read the complete review in The West Australian