Tartuffe

Down at Ground Zero, the Worth Street Theater Company opens its doors to workers and volunteers for free. For others it’s $15 and well worth the ticket price to see their current production of Moliere’s classic comedy TARTUFFE.

Set in trompe-l’oeil…painted columns, lamps and curtains, only the doors are real. The endearing servant TARTUFFE, on the other hand, is a fake — a total hypocrite…neither pious soul nor obsequious slave.

In Jeff Cohen’s modern day adaptation, the action takes place in 1930’s Manhattan, in the wake of the Great Depression. Here Master Orgon and his extended family live, still surrounded by luxury and riches. The pretentious Valere, dressed in tennis whites, sports his daughter’s hand, his wife, Elmire a rag to riches queen, and his son, an obedient albeit troubled fellow strives for every inch of his inheritance.

The actors who portray them, refugees from the popular shows of TV and Broadway, escape into Moliere’s rhyming verse with acrobatic ease, their lines tingling with comic pleasure. And the happy ending is enough to drive us in to cheering as Tartuffe’s perfidy is discovered and punished by the Mayor… the one who’s been cleaning off the mean streets, the former prosecutor turned hero of Ground Zero.

That’s This Week Off-Broadway. I’m Isa Goldberg.