The pious con artist is a figure who will sadly never go out of fashion. Where, in Molière’s day, the clergy held the monopoly on defrauding the spiritually gullible, now a whole range of individuals ranging from Californian crystal healers to Indonesian wellness influencers are poised to fleece lost souls in search of transcendent happiness.
So it feels as if there’s plenty of potential for Molière’s ribald farce to strike gold with 21st century audiences. Eight years ago, the RSC restaged Tartuffe with a fake imam at the centre of its web of intrigue. Here director and adapter Darren Raymond’s lively rewrite – Tartuffe (Remixed) – retains the play’s Christian credentials, setting it against the backdrop of a modern wedding between a Nigerian and a Jamaican family.
This is the latest production with graduates from Intermission Youth, the charity that Raymond – a former prisoner – set up so that each year young people from disadvantaged backgrounds could take part in a drama, film and mentoring programme. Most of their productions have been based on works by Shakespeare – their robust revamp of Romeo and Juliet (Juliet & Romeo) played at the Chelsea Theatre in 2021 – and Mark Rylance has been a patron and mentor for many years.
It’s brilliant to see Rylance bringing his considerable talents to this initiative, but at first his dodgy reverend doesn’t fit the style of irreverence that animates the rest of the production. While it makes sense to keep Tartuffe as a clergyman, what doesn’t entirely make sense in this very modern tale is to make him a priest who could have escaped from a Fifties farce.
Renamed Pastor Blake for this script, Rylance erupts onto the stage with protruding false teeth, a comb over, and a socks-and-sandals unworldliness. He’s here at the invitation of the bride Adanna’s father, Oga (Usifu Jalloh, pictured above left), who has been spiritually lost since the death of his first wife. Yet as Rylance’s Blake gurns and shuffles his way across the stage, it’s difficult to imagine even the most gormless Godfearer taking him seriously.
True, farce is not a form associated with psychological depth, but a little bit more suspension of disbelief would make this a much stronger evening. On Ultz’s set, with its swish banquettes, lavish bouquets of balloons, and peach-coloured suitcases and parcels, we’re poised for seven days of celebration before the wedding between Ivandro da Cruz Leite’s Sinclair and Sara Mokonen’s Adanna (pictured, centre, below).
It’s in the production’s favour that the credible chemistry between Da Cruz Leite and Mokonen makes us quickly invested in their future happiness, as their different families spar and bicker around them. Jalloh’s Oga too – while pompous – has a grief-stricken authority that means we can see why Adanna takes him seriously, even as he makes the absurd declaration that she should marry Blake rather than Sinclair.
It’s also a saving grace that ultimately Rylance is too fine an actor to be restricted by his “Whoops vicar!” appearance. Throughout the evening, as he insinuates himself deeper into the family, we start to feel the chill when he uses the most apparently innocent conversations to convince different individuals to surrender either their money or their bodies for his satisfaction. As a white vicar dealing with a black congregation, he also demonstrates a fake humility about the colonial past that makes his present actions all the more loathsome. Those false teeth just aren’t necessary when the reality of what he represents really begins to bite.
While overall this is an uneven production – a bit of a curate’s egg you might say – a cornucopia of energetic performances keeps the action simmering. Nakeba Buchanan (pictured middle image, right) is superb as Elmire, Oga’s second wife, who maintains her cool throughout, even when Blake tries to seduce her with his vest and socks on. In the meanwhile, Blanche Williams pulls no punches as a pugnacious Great-Grandma.
Raymond’s volley of rhyming couplets contain plenty to entertain, but – in a final quibble – a script that’s so focused on religious foibles really should have noticed by now that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a “she” and not a “he”. Still – as Molière didn’t put it – all’s well that ends well, and once Pastor Blake is dealt with by Afripol, it’s difficult to resist the atmosphere of infectious ebullience as the entire cast takes to the stage and dances.
