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Molière

TARTUFFE 16

National Theatre, Budapest, Hungary

Director: David Doiashvili

At the MITEM 2020 performed in Hungarian with English translation

2 hours 55 minutes with 1 breaks.

“There’s a vast difference, so it seems to me, Between true piety and hypocrisy”

Tartuffe, a profoundly religious figure, is gaining influence in the wealthy home of the Orgons, and is about to cheat Orgon out of his fortune and get his daughter's hand in the process. Soon everyone sees through Tartuffe's tricks – except Orgon. The family come up with a plan to catch the fraudster out.

A simple comedy plot, implemented ingenuously by none other than the brilliant genius of the history of drama: Molière.

In the original title, Molière thought it important to attach the qualifier "l'imposteur" to the name: Tartuffe or the Hypocrite, a.k.a. sanctimonious, eye-rolling, two-faced, pretender, phoney, lip-server, Pharisee. The fact that a language offers so many words for a concept suggests that it keeps people preoccupied. The best indicator of the popularity of this play is that by now, "a real tartuffe" can be added to the list of synonyms.

The character became synonymous with the trait that Molière pilloried in his piece, so much so that, although the play was presented in Versailles in 1664, influential courtiers convinced Louis XIV to ban it. It would not be re-authorised until 1669. A ban, however, was a great way to advertise even back then, and the audience flocked to the premiere on 5^th February. The fact that the enthusiasm would not subsequently fade shows the timeliness and validity of the play. With countless stage interpretations today, every director will find their own Tartuffe, depending on the message they want to convey to the world, and on the social anomaly they focus on. In any case, those who assumed that the play was an attack on faith and banned / embraced it depending on their worldview, may have overlooked these lines by Cléante, wherein Molière expounds his philosophy:

“There’s just one insight I would dare to claim:/ I know that true and false are not the same; / And just as there is nothing I more revere / Than a soul whose faith is steadfast and sincere, / Nothing that I more cherish and admire / Than honest zeal and true religious fire, / So there is nothing that I find more base / Than specious piety’s dishonest face” (Translated by Richard Wilbur).

Georgian director David Doiashvili's two productions in our theatre so far, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Cyrano, as well as his Macbeth, invited to MITEM I, suggest that he will not stop at the level of contemporary allusions, but will dissect the deeper layers of the archetypal phenomenon of pretence that has been with us throughout the ages and is more or less present in all of us.

Orgon's mother

Mari Nagy

Orgon, husband of Elmire

Lajos Ottó Horváth

Elmire, wife of Orgon

Eszter Ács

Damis, son of Orgon

László Szabó Sebestyén

Mariane, daughter of Orgon, in love with Valere

Ágnes Barta

Valere, in love with Mariane

Sándor Berettyán

Cléante, brother-in-law of Orgon

Nándor Berettyán

Tartuffe, a hypocrite

Zsolt Trill

Dorine, Mariane's maid

Nelli Szűcs

Stage designer

David Doiashvili

Costume designer

Róza Bánki

Dramaturge

András Kozma

Stage manager

Gábor Dobos

Krisztián Ködmen

Prompter

Kati Gróf

Assistant director

Rita Herpai

Director

David Doiashvili

Main Stage

David Doiashvili

Born in 1971 in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, David Doiashvili graduated as a theatre director from the Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film University. He was appointed principal director of the Kote Marjanishvili State Academic Drama Theatre in 1998 and managing director and artistic director of Vaso Abashidze Music and Drama State Theatre in 2007. He has worked for major European theatres, such as the Royal National Theatre in London, the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, the Croatian National Theatre Ivan Zajc in Rijeka and the National Theatre Bucharest. He is two-time recipient of the Duruji Award, the most noted prize for work in the theatre in Georgia, and his stage production of Macbeth, which was performed as part of MITEM in 2014, was chosen as the Best Play at a prestigious international festival in Bogota, Columbia. Currently, two of Doiashvili’s productions are part of the repertoire of the National Theatre in Budapest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Cyrano de Bergerac.

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