The School for Wives

IN RECENT years, Mainstage shows have gotten bigger and bigger--bigger casts, bigger sets, bigger statements on the meaning of life--but not better in quality. Director Peter Sagal's hilarious version of Moliere's School for Wives is a simple, unassuming production that puts recent Mainstage shows to shame.

School for Wives is the first in Moliere's trilogy of comic masterpieces. It opens with the imminent marriage of Arnolphe (Eric Oleson), an arrogant country squire and "raving paranoid." Obsessed with a fear of being ridiculed in his choice of a wife, Arnolphe has carefully planned his marriage over many years. He took charge of a young peasant girl, Agnes (Katherine Robin), and raised her just as he wished--innocent and stupid, a girl who thinks "children are begotten through the ear." Now that she's reached marriageable age, he's brought her to a secluded manor near his home to keep her chaste in the last days before their marriage.

In true Moliere fashion, none of Arnolphe's carefully laid-out schemes work, and the chaos that ensues has only been matched these days by the best of Blake Edwards' movies. Sagal takes considerable liberties with the script, further fleshing out Moliere's humor. Scenes take on a cartoon-like quality in the spirit of Chuck Jones' Looney Tunes. At times, Oleson becomes an Elmer Fudd buffoon. He stumbles over tree stumps and brings out an armory of weapons to battle his imagined enemies, looking ridiculously anachronistic in a World War I helmet.

In the middle of the play, Arnolphe forces Agnes to read a book of maxims about marriage, her schooling in wifery. Instead of having Robin read the ditties as the script calls for, Sagal sends in a troupe of "Maxim Players" (Jennifer Litt, Will Provost, Fiona Tingley, and Manson Yew) who proceed to act out eleven of them. Sagal turns a potentially boring segment into an amusing vaudeville skit. Other scenes like this punctuate the show, keeping the action fastpaced and the energy level high.

Almost the entire acting burden falls on the shoulders of Oleson, who carries the whole show Oleson displays an amazing sense of comic timing as well as an irresistible variety of goofy facial expressions. But Oleson's tour-de-force performance really takes off in the serious parts. He manages to make Arnolphe's psychosis accessible to the audience, creating sympathy and pulling off these serious scenes with a skill Robin and Jeff Rossman (who plays Horace, Agnes' lover) lack.

Since Oleson commands the stage with his tremendous stage presence, less is required of the supporting cast. Robin and Rossman have a strong sense of comic timing, but they don't fully convey the simple innocence and sincerity their characters possess. Only part of the problem lies in the translation which turns Moliere's verse into heroic couplets.

Peter Ocko and Jennifer Cool are both wonderfully comic as Arnolphe's hapless servants. The best, most balanced performance in the supporting cast is that of Linus Gelber as Chrysalde, Arnolphe's sage friend.

What makes these performances even more enjoyable is Sagal's intimate staging and inventive set. Foregoing the Loeb's cavernous regular stage, Sagal built a new set where the front section of seats used to be, surrounding the stage on three sides with seats. During Arnolphe's "asides," Oleson comes right up to people in the front rows and talks directly to them. The high degree of interaction makes the impact of the performances greater than "normal" staging would have.

Proving that bigger is not necessarily better, Sagal, his cast and crew have brought out the full potential of Moliere's classic. This production takes previous Mainstage shows to school.