Sahr Ngaujah (center) plays the hypochondriac Argan, Mary Bacon (left) is his second wife Béline, and Rory Furey-King is the maidservant Toinette in Molière in the Park’s production of The Imaginary Invalid.
For its seventh season, Molière in the Park (MIP), in partnership with the Prospect Park Alliance, is producing Molière’s comedy-ballet The Imaginary Invalid in a fresh new translation by Lucie Tiberghien. Tiberghien, MIP’s founder and artistic director, has cut Molière’s original text to the bone for her streamlined production. One of the cuts is the minor character Louison, Angélique's younger sister, to bring the play to a brisk 100 minutes and focus on the central characters.
Olivier and Tony Award nominee Sahr Ngaujah plays Argan, the title character, a hypochondriac who seeks the attention of various doctors. They in turn exploit his fears for their gain. As Argan plots to marry off his daughter Angélique (Shayvawn Webster) to a physician, Thomas Diafoirus, (Naomi Lorrain) to secure his own private medical care, Angélique pleads with her father not to force her into marriage. Even Thomas’s father (Donté Bonner) admits his son is a bit dull:
From left: Naomi Lorrain plays Mr. Diafoirus’ son Thomas, Furey-King (rear) is the mischievous servant Toinette, Ngaujah is Argan, and Donté Bonner is the physician Mr. Diafoirus.
He doesn’t have a lively imagination, nor that spark of wit bestowed on others, but that’s why I long predicted his unique capacity for judgment, an indispensable quality for the exercise of medicine.
Angélique, however, has set her sights on Cléante (Doron JéPaul), a charming young man whom she met at a play; sparks instantly flew between them. To be near Angélique, Cléante has arranged to be her stand-in music teacher. Moreover, Cléante confides the truth to Argan’s clever servant Toinette (Rory Furey-King):
I’m here to meet my destiny; to speak with the lovely Angelique, consult the feelings of her heart, and ask her what she intends to do about this fatal marriage of which I just became aware.
A subplot has Toinette devising a way to expose the deceit of Argan’s second wife, Béline (the superb Mary Bacon), who’s more interested in her husband’s wealth than his well-being. Ultimately, Molière highlights the folly of excessive concern for health and how a gullible person like Argan can become the prey of physicians’ fad treatments. One can easily press a parallel to the recent controversies surrounding Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who, though he gives tepid support to the measles vaccine, pushes for unproven remedies to fight the measles outbreak.
Ngaujah is the “afflicted” Argan, and Bacon plays his conniving second wife, Béline, who feigns affection for him.
Tiberghien, who has directed the production, marshals her resources well. Obviously she delights in the comic aspects of Molière’s play, even adding some stage business of her own to heighten the humor.
A case in point is a preshow interlude. Two male actors enter, one seated in a wheelchair, the other pushing him toward center stage. But just who is the invalid, and who is the caretaker? Although one might presume that the wheelchair-bound character is Argan, it’s FlexN dance-style artist Hunt as himself: he soon leverages his body out of the wheelchair with his strong, muscular frame and proceeds to dance by gliding, standing en pointe, and moonwalking like Michael Jackson.
Of course, the biggest hurdle to staging a satisfying revival of The Imaginary Invalid is to navigate the fine line between caricature and authentically relatable characters. Ngaujah walks this tightrope with aplomb. Although his Argan clearly looks ridiculous wearing a pouch on his pajamas in the first scene to catch his post-enema excrement, Ngaujah also conveys the character’s deep loneliness when, poring over his apothecary’s bill and growing sour-faced at being overcharged for his treatments, he grabs his bell and tries to summon someone—to no avail:
Nobody. No matter what I say. They always leave me alone. There’s no way of keeping them here.
Lorrain plays Argan’s level-headed sister Béralde and Ngaujah is Argan in The Imaginary Invalid. Photographs by Russ Rowland.
Argan’s family, in fact, have grown weary of his neurotic complaints about his health, and they respond to him as if he were the proverbial boy crying wolf.
The finale is wisely truncated. Instead of Argan having a comical graduation ceremony spoken in a corrupt form of Latin, he simply transforms into a “physician” with less folderol.
The most poignant scene in the show by far is outside the play itself. The members of the company—each speaking one line—gather on stage and relate the story of how Molière died. In 1673, when he was gravely ill, Molière played Argan. At the third performance, the playwright and star coughed up blood; shortly after the performance he died.
Molière's The Imaginary Invalid remains a timeless exploration of human folly, cleverly blending humor with incisive social critique. Thanks to the vision of Tiberghien, theatergoers can now see this production for free at Prospect Park’s LeFrak Center.
Molière in the Park’s The Imaginary Invalid plays through May 25 at Prospect Park’s Le Frak’s Center. Evening performance are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday May 25. For tickets and more information, visit moliereinthepark.org.
Playwright: Molière
Direction & Translation: Lucie Tiberghien
Set: Marie Yokoyama
Lighting: Stoli Stolnack
Costumes: Jessica Irvin
Composer/Cellist: Johnathan Moore
Choreographer: Cal Hunt
