On a sandy beach (surrounded on all sides by the audience, giving Conservatory student actors a rare chance to play in the round) after a storm, aristocratic Iphicrates (Brit Whittle) in tux and long silk scarf has washed up with his Harlequin (John Long), a manservant happy that he's saved a flask of liquor. He's also not worried, as is his master, to see the sandbar sign "Island of Slaves." And he's right! When Trivelin (serious Ross Boehringer, done up like a scientist in lab coat and holding notes) saves him from a beating, the island spokesman also announces an exchange of names and roles. When spoiled socialite Euphrosine (Natasha Staley) and her maid Cleanthis (Mariam Habib) arrive, they, too, hear about the island's strictures. By changing identities and social status, they gain empathy for one another and, it is hoped, reform. "We no longer execute," Trivelin says of the former slaves and their descendants who inhabit the island; "we educate."
It's a scheme dear to the heart and writings of the 18th century "enlightened" Pierre Marivaux, and it has relevance not only then and in this production's 1920s but also today.
Before all else comes a period of adjustment. Though the servants rejoice, the masters resist. Natasha Staley brings out Euphrosine's vain, bitchy traits that Cleanthis not only imitates but adds revenge to. Mariam Habib embellishes attitudes and moods, doing a hilarious imitating of her mistress' different kinds of waking moments. (She seems too young, obviously recounting memorized passages, but she has better diction and has become more at ease with the audience than earlier this season.) Staley comes into her own when Euphrosine tries flirting with Trivelin and is a stitch, after exchanging clothes with Cleanthis, fanning her with a palm frond. Sophisticated Whipple is at his best straining at the necessary signing of an agreement to Trivelin's terms and later when he becomes quite human. John Long's engaging Harlequin is the life of the party but leads the group in forgiving and forgetting the past. A song and dance fittingly conclude this comedy.
The set (which ingeniously provides props out of the sand), sound (including music), and costumes (especially Euphrosine's pink flapper outfit with feather in headband) enhance the production. Granted that Marivaux's unusual language is hard to translate, this version may modernize a bit too much. It's slangy and scatological beyond the production's time and totally without French nuance. After it stops just short of getting bogged down in exposition, though, it proves quite serviceable. The director helps the flow with as much movement as possible.
