'Tartuffe' Off-Broadway review — French farce gets a fresh face
5 / 10
The convention is a little too on the nose — we know no one in this family is the humble, selfless servant Tartuffe claimed to be, but we did just spend two hours invested in their stories and hoping for a happy ending. Hnath and Benson seem a tad too comfortable in their smug resignation; I half expected Trump to come out to pardon Orgon’s treason, not a messenger of Louis XIV. The scenic design by dots is clever, with the family’s home placed atop a clay tennis court, but it leaves little to look at. Once you get the conceit, it gets old fast. Perhaps the same could be said of the production.
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