Tartuffe:Matthew Chenevert

Tartuffe: Matthew Chenevert

A French play. This was listed as a comedy but it seemed more like an episode of Murder She Wrote to me. Well between that and Golden Girls. A lot of text to read. I’m hoping the video will help clear up some of my questions when I watch it later.

While it took a while for me to find the direction of the play, I didn’t really see the point of it. The characters were difficult to keep straight as far as their relationship to each other. I don’t like a lot of characters popping in and out. I actually had to create an chart to figure out who was married to who and who was the brother-in-law and who wanted to marry which ones sister… Very confusing.

Tartuffe is a con-man and the character struck me as crazy to take on a whole family as he seemed to play them against each other seemingly without worry of getting caught. Orgon was so misled that the was going through all sorts of hoops for Tartuffe. His daughter, he’s secrets, and to top it off he got Orgons house! He was slick. Well that or Orgon is an idiot. That seems to be the direction of the play. Orgon gets deeper and deeper into trouble.

Tartuffe was a hypocrite, a con-man, and I pictured him as Bill Clinton. Maybe not quite as slick because he got caught.