El misantrop, Teatre Lliure Review
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review.
Molière’s The Misanthrope has been modernized, and it’s more contemporary than ever. Directed by David Selvas, with dramaturgy by Sergi Pompermayer and versification by Pablo Macho Otero, this new adaptation sets our characters in a record company where hypocrisy is still present, and even amplified by social media.
The production has been updated so seamlessly that it’s impossible to tell what’s been added or changed from the original; there are no clumsy modern patches here and there, but instead, it feels like a whole new play made for today’s audiences.
The whole play is in verse, but it is never tiresome. Quite the opposite; there are some very clever jokes that use this kind of structure to their advantage. The whole text has been modernized and is very approachable and understandable, making the most of modern phrases, expressions, and allusions.
Pol López and Mireia Aixalà are Alceste and Célimène, a couple that couldn’t be more different. Alceste is a music lover who is completely fed up with the world’s falsehoods and people’s dishonesty. Célimène, on the other hand, navigates the modern world with ease, confidence, and a bit of cockiness as well. In them, we can see two very different ways of seeing the world, as well as two very different objectives in life.
The supporting cast is usually onstage playing live, in a way that is reminiscent of Ostermeier’s reimagining of An Enemy of the People and makes complete sense given the fact that our characters are all affiliated with the record company in one way or another.
One thing I would maybe point out is the music choices. The songs played live have been carefully chosen and mirror our characters’ actions and feelings. However, the songs being in English perhaps made those subtleties go unnoticed by non-English speakers. That wouldn’t really detract anyone from liking the play, but it is an extra layer of depth that perhaps was missed out on by some. There is a cool moment of interaction in which our main character asks the public to sing a Lou Reed song; I unfortunately did not know it at all!
The staging of the production was very clever as well, and it included a screen that served both as a way of separating spaces as well as a canvas for projections, such as a character’s TikTok-like videos or even song lyrics.
El misantrop is funny, modern, entertaining, and thought-provoking—everything one might wish for from a contemporary production of Molière’s acclaimed work.
You can catch El misantrop at Teatre Lliure until January 4th.
★★★★★
