Video: Clowning Around In Rehearsals with the Company of THE IMAGINARY INVALID

There’s plenty of funny business brewing at the Todd Haimes Theatre, where Tony Award winner Bill Irwin and an all-star company are getting ready to bring Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid back to Broadway. Roundabout Theatre Company’s new production features a fresh adaptation written by Irwin, who also stars as Argan, with Brandon J. Dirden at the helm. 

For Irwin, the project is an opportunity to tackle a Molière comedy that has long held a special place in his heart.

"This is my favorite Molière play," Irwin told BroadwayWorld. "I like this one because it's ragged. It's like a fever dream. He wrote it when he was sick and he wrote it so he could play it before he died, which he just barely made."

Irwin also sees the centuries-old comedy as an ancestor to a much more modern form of entertainment.

"It is the forebear of all the sitcoms that we grew up on and we have running in our heads,” he explained. “Lucille Ball, you know, is somehow coming out of his head.... All the really great family stuff is right there. You can feel it being born."

And there is no shortage of comedy pros on hand to bring Irwin’s adaptation to life. The company includes Rachel Bloom, Brooks Ashmanskas and more—a group that Dirden affectionately described as "comedic assassins."

"I gotta tell you, I feel very guilty when I cash my paychecks on this one. It doesn't feel like work at all," Dirden joked. “This cast is chock full of just assassins—comedic assassins—and the way that they just go to the edges with the storytelling, I just have to make sure they don't fall off and bring them back some little bit here, little bit there. But it is a dream."

Dirden was equally enthusiastic about working alongside Irwin, praising the Tony winner’s curiosity and generosity throughout the rehearsal process.

"No matter how much he's accomplished, no matter how celebrated he is, he is one of the most curious. He has a childlike imagination,” Dirden said. “He leads with such generosity, but also such painstaking, detail-oriented work and joy. So, I mean, what else could you ask for?"

That sense of play appears to extend throughout the company, which Irwin described as a "perfect room of clowns." Now, the cast is preparing to take all of that experimentation out of the rehearsal room and put it in front of Broadway audiences.