If as much attention had been lavished on the play's literary facets and far-out commedia characterizations as there has been on quirky production values, we wouldn't have to be told how classic and funny is The Imaginary Invalid. For example, take that wonderful opening scene (here preceded by a superfluous Punchinello) of Argan poring over his medical bills and whittling them down to the size he wants to pay. Now, while robust Dean Anthony laboriously plinks sou after sou on a side table, it's the gals on chairs facing backward on each side of the stage that divert attention.
Wily servant Toinette, confidently played by Katherine Tanner, is the first to step forward to show up her boss for the hypochondriac he is. She opposes his wanting daughter Angelique to wed a doctor so he'll have free medical care. In fact, she acts as a messenger from suitor Cleante. By the time pretty-in-pink Meredith Maddox as Angelique is pleading with Argan to be able to wed the man she loves, a backlit screen is well into numerous color changes that suggest differing moods and fortunes. Angelique's crying is failing before Argan's haggling when her scheming stepmother Beline, in the person of slithery Luciann Lajoie, sexily cajoles Argan into acting like a spoiled baby. (Granted her purring is funny, but there's too much of it.) He insists on bringing in the son of his silly Dr. Diaforius (one of three roles played by Heather Corwin, who doesn't look like a man in any of them). New doctor Thomas Diaforius, broadly rendered by stringy-haired Brian Graves, initially mistakes Beline for Angelique. When set straight, he begins courting with an invitation to a dissection. What a contrast to handsome Francisco Lozano as the mannerly, devoted Cleante!
But not even a voice of reason -- spoken with distinction by Bryan Whitcomb as Argan's brother Beralde -- can persuade him to cooperate with nature, not fight it, to maintain true health. How modern, that spokesman for Moliere! How little prepared for, here, Beralde's illustrating that a good entertainment (dance, in this case) may be the best medicine!
Is it because dance is her area of expertise that director Margaret Eginton has paid more attention to physical than dramatic movement? For its 1673 setting, why, when Cleante disguised as a music teacher performs a little allegorical "impromptu," is there set up a stage of steel and glass lit by modern bulbs? With all the references to purgings, why are funny enemas or at least purgative contraptions not used onstage? And why so many offstage toilet flushings?
We get a conferring of medical status in bogus Latin much protracted whereas a humorous satire on lawyers is underplayed. There's also little delineation of differences in the comic doctors. No wonder it's so easy for Toinette to imitate one, when she executes a plan to expose Beline and change Argan. Unfortunately, the doctors' tall black hats trimmed in bright colored satins, suggest Dr. Seuss comic-book characters, mixing comic styles as confusedly as classical and modern design elements. Otherwise, costumes are a plus visually and give conservatory student actors a chance to handle moving in them. If only they'd been taught how to get laughs, as Moliere did, too!
