Year: 1970
Title of the play: The Misanthrope
Author: Molière Trans. Richard Wilbur
Director: David William
Others in the Cast: David Horovitch, Donald Pickering, Sian Thomas, Sheila Ballantine, Malcolm Sinclair, Matthew Byan Shaw
Company/Event:
Theatre and location: Nottingham Playhouse
Other productions of the same play: 1989 - English version by Tony Harrison; dir. Paul Unwin; National Theatre and Bristol Old Vic; Theatre Royal, Bristol; Bradford; Wolverhampton; Hull New Theatre; Nottingham; Norwich; Theatre Royal, Brighton; Lyttelton Theatre, London
Plot summary: Alceste is the eponymous Misanthrope, whose rejection of polite conventions makes him unpopular and conflicts with his love for Célimène, a young woman who pays great attention to social conventions.
Peth’s role: Alceste
Reviews:
Far preferable to the Old Vic Feydeau is the Moliere at the National, ''The Misanthrope,'' a co-production with the Bristol Old Vic, directed by Paul Unwin and starring Edward Petherbridge. Mr. Petherbridge is an elegant Alceste, the self-wounding truth-teller in a world of hypocrites. Sian Thomas is charming as Celimene, the woman he adores in spite of all evidence of nonreciprocity. The primary obstacle is the scenery, designed by Richard Hudson - a less effective variation on his perspective-distorting setting for ''Too Clever by Half.'' But the production lets Moliere (in the Tony Harrison adaptation) speak for himself. Mel Gussow, New York Times, August 20, 1989
Production details: Link to the 1989 production
Related links:
A little sidebar after the production:
Edward Petherbridge, the actor who played
Lord Peter Wimsey on public television's "Mystery!" production, told
of his recent battle with the director of a revival of Moliere's "The
Misanthrope," who insisted for weeks that Petherbridge read the iambic pentameter
couplets in his native North Country accent.
Petherbridge then read the company the rather lengthy protest poem he had
composed to shake the errant director from his folly. - The Washington Post
The recording of the production has been or is available in a few places:
And on this page: An authentically baroque version of Richard Wilbur's artful
translation, starring Edward Petherbridge in a thoroughly stylized and
thoroughly modern rendition
Gallery:
Original pic here
