The sun was still fairly well up in the sky when the New York Classical Theatre’s free outdoor performance of Moliere’s Scapin began on Saturday when Gothamist went to see it. By the end of the show dusk had settled in and the crew was using flashlights as footlights, but the lightness of the sky throughout much of it was just as well – the better to see this utterly delightful little performance. Plus it was good to be able to see in order to follow the cast around, as Scapin (like most of NYCT’s plays) is done in “environmental” format, meaning that every scene or so, you get up from your spot and move to a new little grove of the park.
This is one of Moliere’s less-performed plays, and it is kind of a trifle; it will remind those who have seen it of Tartuffe, except without quite as many levels of meaning running through all of it. Fortunately, this is an adaptation/translation by Bill Irwin and Mark O’Donnell, who were exactly suited to the task, and they’ve done a wonderful job of making it modern yet not compromising its original sensibility, and giving it somewhat more heft to make it feel relevant to audiences today. Like so many plays of the commedia dell’arte format, Scapin revolves around mistaken identities and the ingenious wiles of a servant. Two, in this case: Scapin (Grant Neale), who serves a Signor Geronte and his son Leander, and Sylvestre (Erik Gratton), who serves Signor Argante and his son Octave. The two Signors were away, with their sons supervised by the servants, but the boys fall hopelessly in love with two girls who are not exactly of the right class – Hyacinth, an orphan, and Zerbinette, a gypsy. When the fathers return, Scapin and Sylvestre have to find a way to allow the sons to stay with these girls, but somehow mollify the Signors at the same time, since they had other plans for their heirs. Naturally there are lots of twists and turns along the way, and much slapstick humor that shows just how eternal and natural the impulse to laugh at people getting beaten up is.
