BY
LUCIA MAURO
 |
With summer in full swing, most theatres have moved their productions outdoors. And with astonishing regularity, Shakespeare has proven the bucolic playwright of choice. But since 1997, Stage Two Theatre has bucked the Bard in favor of the bitingly sarcastic 17th century dramatist Moliere. After a successful production of Tartuffe, Stage Two came to the attention of the Cuneo Museum and Gardens in Vernon Hills.
Previously based in Highwood, the company that started out in 1986 premiering original works suddenly found itself tweaking prudes and all manners of hypocrites at its first site-specific Moliere Festival in the summer of 1998. Cuneo administrators felt their lavish Italian villa environs were well suited to a playwright whose work was rooted in commedia dell’arte. The troupe also expanded to a year-round season of period plays conducive to their naturally malleable surroundings.
Stage Two is one of the only Chicago-area theatres to have a permanent "environmental" space that encompasses vast statue-lined outdoor gardens, an antique-ensconced museum and a baronial Grand Hall (where they’ve presented productions of The Lion in Winter and Fortinbras). Moliere’s The Miser and The Schemings of Scapin have been staged on the Cuneo grounds.
This year, Stage Two presents The Misanthrope Aug. 10-Sept. 2 in a courtyard at Cuneo anchored by a built-in well. Also setting these stagings of Moliere apart is the innovative fact that Stage Two’s artistic associate and resident playwright Timothy Mooney has adapted these plays in rhymed iambic pentameter.
He currently has adapted 13 of Moliere’s works and intends to complete all 32 in the French wit’s satiric canon. Mooney continues to walk a fine line between making Moliere more understandable to the modern ear while remaining true to the writer’s original intention and style.
"As an adapter," says Mooney, who is taking on the title role in The Misanthrope. "You’re working from material that’s already been translated. I felt the need to do something unique. When I set The Miser to iambic pentameter, I found that it heightened the rhetoric and style of the play. It lifted the whole thing.
"The content of the argument remained virtually unchanged. American actors see the verse and get a real charge out of taking it on. Audiences experience Moliere as outrageous and very modern."
Mooney’s long-term goal is to create versions of Moliere’s plays that will work in any time and place. "Moliere’s vision was eternal," adds the adapter, "and the characteristics he drew and made fun of are the characteristics that we so love to mock today. He hated hypocrisy, pomposity, arrogance and pretentiousness. And he was a master at constructing elaborate scenarios whereby these types would find themselves destroyed by their own selfish arrogance."
Interestingly, Mooney’s adaptations have been requested by theatre departments at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and the University of Free State of South Africa–the latter offering him the option of directing.
Closer to home, Stage Two’s Moliere Festival extends beyond a solitary performance. Pre-show entertainment features the Evanston-based Piccolo Theatre enacting commedia dell’arte. For most of June and July, Stage Two has been delivering Moliere readings at the Hawthorn Mall Barnes & Noble in Vernon Hills. It recently teamed up with the Alliance Francaise at 810 N. Dearborn in Chicago to participate in workshop performances of The School for Wives (Aug. 12), The Bourgeois Gentleman (Aug. 19), and Monsieur du Porceaugnac (Aug. 26).
In addition to establishing their Moliere niche beyond the Cuneo estate, these readings have provided another performance opportunity for Stage Two on Saturday nights when Cuneo hosts private functions.
Mooney says one of the greatest benefits of performing at Cuneo involves the built-in scenery.
For instance, this summer audiences will watch a 17th century satire unfold against a backdrop of Versailles proportions. "There’s a romance that goes with the space," says Mooney. Stage Two, therefore, does not build a separate performing area. The play dictates which section of the mansion–outdoors or indoors–would best illuminate the script.
For the fall season, the theatre plans to open Agatha Christie’s rarely produced murder mystery, The Hollow, in conjunction with Cuneo’s Halloween festivities. At present, Stage Two does not offer a subscription series, and the biggest draws are a combination of the Cuneo landmark and the plays’ titles.
According to Mooney, who has served as Stage Two’s artistic director, the company grew out of a community theatre structure in 1986. The troupe wanted to take more risks and began mounting mainly world premieres in 1988 at the College of Lake County. Over the past 10 years, Stage Two has presented over 100 plays, most of them Chicago premieres. Its growth necessitated a move to a Waukegan former men’s clothing store transformed into a 60-seat theatre. Its open-door audition policy broadened the scope of actors, directors and playwrights. Then the theatre moved again to a space (now the Attic Playhouse) above a restaurant in Highwood.
Mooney plans to return to producing original work, but acknowledges that the Cuneo Museum and Gardens is more appropriate for the classics and plays with a less avant-garde appeal. Stage Two stands as an example of a theatre company that has adapted with the times and figured out a new intellectually stimulating way to deliver the classics to 21st century audiences.