this week in theater

LEMON GIRLS OR ART FOR THE ARTLESS

A quartet of senior women gets more than they bargained for in Lemon Girls or Art for Artless (photo by Andrew Bisdale)

LEMON GIRLS OR ART FOR THE ARTLESS
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, the Downstairs
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Thursday – Sunday through March 27, $25-$30
212-475-7710
www.lamama.org
talkingband.org

Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless is a small show in a small space, but it’s one of the most exhilarating and inspiring shows I’ve seen since the pandemic interrupted in-person entertainment in March 2020. It’s an uproarious and touching celebration of aging and coming to terms with who you are and what you’ve accomplished, a kind of alternative to the wickedly fun Six on Broadway, where the six wives of Henry VIII battle it out to see who had it worst with the monarch.

Continuing in the Downstairs theater at La MaMa through March 27, Lemon Girls is about four senior women whose connection to life changes when they meet a stranger in their local café, appropriately called Solo, where the quartet, friends since attending the progressive Lemon Elementary school together, meet for coffee every Tuesday at 3:30. They sit at the same table each week, but they are surprised one afternoon to not only find a line to get in — the new pencil latte has become a thing — but also see that a stranger has taken their spot.

Urban historian Nivea (Patrena Murray), social worker Topo (Lizzie Olesker), retired civil servant Pinny (Louise Smith), and cookbook writer Lorca (Ellen Maddow) assume that the man, Sid Spitz (Jack Wetherall), will cede them the table, but instead he cheekily asks them to join him, in some ways becoming their fifth friend, painter Fran (Tina Shepard), who is not there. They recognize instantly that he’s not like the other males they know, who call themselves the Romeos: Retired Old Men Eating Out. (“They enjoy the turkey chili. It gives them gas,” Pinny points out.) An FIT librarian and performance artist, Sid invites the women to become part of a music theater workshop he leads in the basement of a rec center.

After some waffling, they do actually show up. Their skepticism of Sid’s earnest direction gives the rehearsal scenes brilliant, low-key comedy. “Keep on walking, fill in the spaces, curve through the people, use your arms. And STOP. And float. And STOP and float,” he advises, adding, “The floor is sand, your feet are hands, they squeeze the sand. They caress, they sink, they caress, they squeeze.”

Lorca says to Nivea, “What does he mean our feet are hands? Like monkeys? Does he mean monkeys? Is this the beach? Are we supposed to be at the beach, or the zoo?”

When Sid tells them to move underwater and “fill the empty spaces,” Lorca wonders, “Underwater? How do we breathe? People can’t breathe underwater.” And when he prompts them to glide like their hands are knives and the air is bread, slicing away, Lorca argues, “Suddenly it’s the kitchen?”

Sid Spitz (Jack Wetherall) leads rehearsals for upcoming show in charmer at La MaMa (photo by Andrew Bisdale)

But the four women are superb actors, able to play their characters, older women who are learning to perform, with skill and nuance as the quartet eventually enjoys adapting to Sid’s unique choreographic methods and come up with songs that share intimate details of their lives. As they prepare to put on a public show for an organization called Art for the Artless, there’s conflict: In order to keep the workshop funded, they need a fifth participant, and Nivea promises to bring Fran.

In addition, Sid needs to get paid so he can afford his rent to his landlord and best friend, Marvin; the unseen Marvin is about to turn ninety and is close with artist David Hockney, which excites the group, who rave about how Hockney’s recent show at the Met changed their lives.

At one point, Topo opines, “What I think I look like and what I look like don’t match. That gives me the creeps,” to which Lorca replies, “But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Before the rehearsals, the women had resigned themselves to a plain existence, exemplified by some of Lorca’s bitter songs. Sitting outside the café, Lorca and Pinny remember one of Lorca’s schoolgirl ditties: “I sit on a bee because I am dumb / I scream at my teacher cuz she isn’t fair / I kick the doctor because he hurt me / I drown in the river because it is there.” But hope is on the way.

Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless is the latest from avant-garde mainstays Talking Band, which has staged more than fifty new works since 1974. The show is directed by four-time Obie winner Paul Zimet (The City of No Illusions, The Walk Across America for Mother Earth), who cofounded the troupe with Maddow (Fusiform Gyrus — A Septet for Two Scientists and Five Horns, Fat Skirt Big Nozzle), who wrote Lemon Girls and composed the wonderful songs, and Shepard. Sean Donovan (Cabin, The Reception) did the marvelous, often hysterical choreography, which is a character unto itself, helping define the four women and how they view the world. The fab costumes are by Kiki Smith.

Anna Kiraly’s set is anchored by the slightly raised Café Solo at the corner of stage right, covered by a blue curtain when the action is taking place in the central makeshift workshop space, where a door leads beyond. The characters open and close the curtain as scenes there begin and end; on the back wall of the café, Kiraly projects pixelated, abstracted black-and-white footage of younger people hanging out in the shop, which the four women ignore.

As we emerge from the coronavirus crisis, which hit senior citizens particularly hard, it is an absolute joy to watch Nivea, Topo, Pinny, Lorca, and Sid, portrayed by a supremely talented cast, meeting new people, trying new things, and finding renewed meaning in their everyday existence.

“That’s what’s changed!” Nivea suddenly declares. “That’s what I’ve gone back to, I mean. I’ve stopped watching myself. I used to always be watching myself watching myself. Did you ever do that?”

Lorca replies, “Oh yeah. Everything was such a ridiculous complication of layers. And finally I just got tired of it, really, really tired of it. I would watch myself reflected in store windows looking like a hobbling old hag. It was so sad and exhausting! So I just stopped looking. It’s like I went back to when I was eight or something. Whatever I feel like doing, I do it.”

Talking Band has been around for nearly a half century; if you haven’t seen them before, you’ll be thrilled that you’ve met them now and have finally been introduced to their intoxicating philosophy.

WAVES ACROSS TIME: TRADITIONAL DANCE AND MUSIC OF OKINAWA

“Waves Across Time: Traditional Dance and Music of Okinawa” comes to Japan Society March 18-19 (photo © Yohei Oshiro)

Who: Okinawan dancers and musicians
What: Performance honoring the golden anniversary of Okinawa being returned to Japan following US WWII occupation
Where: Japan Society, 333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
When: Friday, March 18, and Saturday, March 19, $42, 7:30
Why: On June 17, 1971, the last of the Ryukyu Islands was returned to Japanese control. “Waves Across Time: Traditional Dance and Music of Okinawa” is touring the United States, paying tribute to the fiftieth anniversary of that event with an evening of traditional music and dance that comes to Japan Society on March 18 and 19. Michihiko Kakazu, the artistic director of the National Theatre Okinawa, has curated a diverse program that includes several types of traditional storytelling featuring a select group of performers wearing lavish, colorful bingata costumes, created using a unique Okinawan dyeing process.

“Waves Across Time” begins with excerpts from the noh-inspired kumiodori masterpiece Manzai Techiuchi; “Sakamoto-bushi” features two women using castanets called yotsudake, followed by a dance between brothers disguised as buskers, and concluding with “Shinobi no ba,” a secret rendezvous that includes solos for the thirteen-stringed koto and the fue. The program continues with several zo odori works, folk dances that originated in the nineteenth century and grew in popularity in the late 1920s after the Meiji era, consisting of solos, duets, and ensemble pieces about traditional village life (Murasakae), true love, and martial arts. The music will be performed live on the snakeskin-covered three-stringed sanshin and other traditional instruments. Each performance will be preceded by a lecture on Okinawa by ethnomusicologist Dr. James Rhys Edwards at 6:30; Japan Society will also host the workshop “Introduction to Okinawan Dance,” led by Kakazu and members of the troupe, on March 19 at 11:00 ($50) and “Okinawan Dance Workshop for Families” on March 20 at 10:30 ($40 per family).

ON SUGARLAND

Aleshea Harris’s On Sugarland takes place in a southern cul-de-sac amid wartime (photo by Joan Marcus)

ON SUGARLAND
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 20, $55-$75
www.nytw.org

“We got to holler,” Staff Sergeant Saul Greenwood (Billy Eugene Jones) declares in Aleshea Harris’s electrifying On Sugarland, continuing at New York Theatre Workshop through March 20. He and the Sugarland cul-de-sac of mobile homes, a poor neighborhood trapped inside circular train tracks that promise to take them nowhere, holler in unison to mourn lost members of their community and to honor their ancestors, but the screams resound against generations of socioeconomic injustice and systemic racism emanating from the military industrial complex and its reliance on a fervent nationalism above all else.

Brilliantly filtering Sophocles’s Philoctetes through a bit of Tennessee Williams, Harris tells the vivid, haunting story of the four-hundred-year war fought by Blacks in America for their humanity. The play opens as the people of Sugarland gather to holler for Sergeant Iola Marie Eagle Eye, who the army has finally declared Presumed Killed in Action after her body had gone missing for years. Her fourteen-year-old daughter, Sadie (Kiki Layne), hasn’t spoken in all that time, her voice as well as her mother taken from her, but the narrative is punctuated with her long, poignant monologues to the audience about the matriarchs of her family, generation by generation, back to her great-great-great-grandmother, a freed slave who carried messages to Union soldiers during the Civil War. Each of her stories ends with bloodshed.

Evelyn (Stephanie Berry) and Tisha (Lizan Mitchell) are elderly sisters who can’t stop squawking at each other. Evelyn is like Blanche DuBois, living in a fantasy world; she takes her time overdressing for Iola Marie’s funeral, hoping to attract a suitor. Tisha tends to an outdoor shrine where she collects items from the men, women, and children who have died, paying special attention to her late son’s belongings, which she talks to as if he were there. “It’s time. You’re gonna make us late,” Tisha complains. “The only ‘late’ a lady ever needs to worry about is when her monthly hasn’t shown itself. And since your basement is sealed shut, you good,” Evelyn responds. “When they send you to hell, Ima be in Heaven waiting,” Tisha says.

Saul leads the service in honor of Iola Marie, proclaiming, “We got to holler / They ain’t sent her body home / ’Cause there ain’t nothin left to send / The War has taken the flesh of our dear sister / but the soul is intact / And we are gathered here to reach into / the next world / the world that now holds Iola / We are gathered here to knock on that world’s door / with a singing and a praise / We are gathered here to holler so she can hear us from where she’s at and know that she was loved.” It’s a powerful memorial for all fallen Black people, not just one lost soldier.

Addis (Caleb Eberhardt) and his father, Saul (Billy Eugene Jones), face different kinds of battles in searing new play (photo by Joan Marcus)

But Evelyn is having none of it. “That War can kiss the black off my ass. Fuck that War. Fuck burying boxes. Fuck hollering,” she tells her sister. “I am not cursing the doing of things. I am cursing their necessity. I am cursing the conditions which have led to what have become our customs. Little girls burying boxes for their dead mothers. Our front yard looking like some kind of horrifying carnival graveyard. Calling it Sugarland don’t make it sweet.”

Saul’s seventeen-year-old son, Addis (Caleb Eberhardt), wants to be a warrior like his father; too young and addled for the military, he guards Sugarland as if he were a soldier. He’s in love with Iola Marie’s sister, Odella (Adeola Role), a woman his father’s age. He tells Sadie, “Uh huh Busy being a soldier if you must know I’m already in Junior Cadets Almost Cadet First Sergeant If The War come to this cul-de-sac Ima show out Gon be the last one standing Ima carry the flag and plant that mug on a hilltop They gon make a statue of ya boy Ima be a hero They gon call my name.” Addis regularly shaves his father with a straight razor and helps tend to Saul’s damaged, foul-smelling foot, which oozes blood. Addis wants to join the army, while Saul wants to return to duty, despite his mental and physical injuries.

Meanwhile, the Rowdy (Thomas Walter Booker, Xavier Scott Evans, Mister Fitzgerald, Josh Fulton, Charisma Glasper, Kai Heath, Shemar Yanick Jonas, and Mariyea), a group of eight male, female, and nonbinary teenagers, serve as the Greek chorus, wandering around on the periphery, parading through the space, blasting music, harassing Addis, and commenting on what they’re seeing and occasionally interacting with the others as the biggest holler of all is to come.

On Sugarland is a brilliant, Pulitzer-worthy play deserving of a Broadway transfer and a wide audience. Harris (Is God Is, What to Send Up When It Goes Down), a former spoken-word performer whose mother is a Trinidadian immigrant who spent twenty years in the army, captures the heart and soul of a community too long unheard and unseen. Sadie talks often in her monologues of how her female ancestors were invisible. “White men ain’t in the business of seeing little black girls / you know / we invisible,” she says. Saul says a similar thing about Iola Marie. Their hollers echo through the theater until you can feel it in your bones. Harris makes it clear that a reckoning is coming, so everyone better start opening their eyes and ears. “It was a goddamn beautiful massacre,” Sadie says of an ancestor’s act of vengeance.

Obie-winning director Whitney White (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Semblance), who previously collaborated with Harris on the ritualistic healing production What to Send Up When It Goes Down, maintains a furious pace, a relentless assault on the senses that is superbly choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly (Hurricane Diane, The House That Will Not Stand); there is nary a wasted word or movement during the play’s intense and passionate 160 minutes (with intermission).

Evelyn (Stephanie Berry) remembers the past as Sadie (Kiki Layne) listens intently (photo by Joan Marcus)

The play is set in what the German-born, Kentucky-raised Harris describes as “a time of war. yesterday, today, and, unfortunately, tomorrow.” Adam Rigg’s confining set tempts the characters with a potential freedom that seems to always be just out of reach. Qween Jean’s costumes run from elegant to street-savvy, while Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound design and his and Starr Busby’s original music pound and pulsate.

At several points, the recording of a bugle can be heard. The onstage characters stop what they’re doing and salute a nonexistent flag. Despite how this country has treated them and their ancestors over the last four centuries, they still believe in what it has to offer. “Iss all kinda massacres, ain’t it?” Sadie says after a bugle plays the anthem. “All kinds. They got all kinds.”

ROUND DANCE

Arthur Schnitzler’s controversial La Ronde gets a new adaptation at the IRT Theater (photo by Adrian Viruet)

ROUND DANCE
IRT Theater
154 Christopher St. between Washington & Greenwich Sts.
Thursday – Sunday through March 27, $30
irttheater.org

Arthur Schnitzler’s controversial 1897 play, Reigen, better known as La Ronde, took more than two decades to reach the stage in a professional production, then was banned. The Vienna-born writer was brought up on immorality charges, laced with anti-Semitism, in Berlin and, though cleared, refused to allow the play to be performed in German-speaking countries; it wasn’t until 1982 that his son gave permission for productions in Germany and Austria.

La Ronde is a circular tale of five men and five women rotating in scenes of sex and love in 1890s Vienna; in each episode, one of the characters moves on to another person in the next scene, then that second person continues to a third person, and so on until the story revolves back to the first. The play has been adapted into a glorious 1950 film by Max Ophüls, narrated by Anton Walbrook and featuring a lively merry-go-round; Roger Vadim made a raunchier version in 1964 set in 1914 Paris, the script adapted by Jean Anouilh.

Oldest Boys Productions and Accidental Repertory Theater are now presenting the play, with the English title Round Dance, at the IRT Theater on Christopher St., directed by H. Clark Kee from his own translation. Part of the 3B Development Series, the show takes place in a small, intimate space. All ten actors — who portray men and women from different classes, from a hooker, a count, a poet, and a young wife to a soldier, a sweet girl, a gentleman, and a chambermaid — are always onstage. The eight actors who aren’t in the scene are lined up on the right and left, sitting in folding chairs, and they leap up to rearrange the set (tables, chairs, beds) in between each encounter. The success of the play depends on the subtle chemistry among the cast and the smooth transition between scenes, but Kee can’t quite reach those goals.

The acting is uneven, and the pace is unsteady, particularly over the course of two hours without an intermission. It has its moments but cannot sustain enough intensity, and the attempts to make the tale more relevant in the #metoo era amid the much-needed reevaluation of sexual consent, power dynamics, and conventional gender roles don’t ring true, nor does the incidental and interstitial music, which includes Haddaway’s “What Is Love (Baby Don’t Hurt Me).”

In the twenty-first century, Round Dance, which is set in an unidentified recent past, should look more forward; for example, in 2019, Cutting Ball Theater staged a version of La Ronde performed by two women, one Black, one white, that challenged old-fashioned perceptions and stereotypes from multiple perspectives, and Canada’s Soulpepper Theatre Company went all-out in a bold, sexy adaptation by Jason Sherman in 2013.

At the end of the play the night I went, the cast beckoned to Kee (Yellow Sound, Leonce and Lena) to join them onstage and accept a bouquet of roses; he declined, perhaps out of shyness, or maybe because he knew that the play still could use some further development.

LET THERE BE THEATRE — A CALL TO ACTION: WHITE RABBIT RED RABBIT

Who: Et Alia Theater
What: One-night-only performance of White Rabbit Red Rabbit
Where: Theater for the New City, Johnson Theater, 155 First Ave. between Ninth & Tenth Sts.
When: Sunday, March 13, $10-$18, 8:00
Why: On Friday, March 13, 2020, theaters across New York City were shuttered because of Covid-19. On March 13, 2022, at 8:00, to mark the two-year anniversary and to celebrate the reopening of venues around the globe, international companies will be performing Berlin-based Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s 2011 autobiographical hit White Rabbit Red Rabbit as part of Let There Be Theatre — A Call to Action. The event is organized by Berlin-based Aurora Nova founder Wolfgang Hoffmann, who explains: “Ten years ago, almost to the day, I performed in a show at the Fadjr Festival in Tehran. At the festival hotel I was introduced to a young unpublished playwright who did not have a passport because he had refused to do military service. In order to get his work in front of an audience, he had devised a play that had to be performed as a cold read, without the need of a director, set, or rehearsals. All it needed was for a brave performer to agree to read a text in front of a live audience, without first knowing what the play was about. I liked this young man and loved his idea and spontaneously agreed to help produce his show at the Edinburgh Fringe later that year. When I finally saw the show performed live, I realised what this playwright had achieved. Through the power of his words alone he had written himself to freedom.”

Here in New York, Et Alia Theater, a company founded and led by international women, will be staging White Rabbit Red Rabbit at Theater for the New City, performed by co-artistic director Maria Müller (On How to Be a Monster, Where Are You from Again?). During the pandemic, Et Alia made the indie film This Is Me Eating___, then performed it live at the Alchemical Studios for one day last October. Tickets are only $10–$18 to see the sixty-to-ninety-minute show, which is always just as surprising for the actor as it is for the audience. I saw Obie winner Linda Emond in Soleimanpour’s autobiographical Nassim in 2018, which also involved no rehearsals and no prior access to the script, and it was a joy from start to finish. Among those who have previously performed White Rabbit Red Rabbit are John Hurt, Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane, Stephen Rea, Sinead Cusack, Dominic West, Wayne Brady, Darren Criss, Kathy Najimy, Cynthia Nixon, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Urie, and Ken Loach.

Et Alia Theater will perform White Rabbit Red Rabbit on March 13 at Theater for the New City

“It is a one-time experience because the performer will have its opening and closing night of this play at the same time,” Hoffmann continues. “At 8 pm in every time zone there will be a multitude of shows starting at the same time for twenty-four hours, thus creating a massive theatrical community. On March 13 hundreds of courageous performers will face the same daring task to read a text they have not seen before to a live audience and everybody will be present at the same moment. The thought of all of us together, making theater once again — gives me boundless hope and energy.” Yes indeed, it’s great to be back.

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF A WOMAN IN NEED

Naima Mora portrays different versions of herself in The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need (photos by Harris Davey)

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF A WOMAN IN NEED
Triad Theater
158 West 72nd St. between Amsterdam & Columbus Aves.
Saturday, March 12, April 9, May 14, June 18, $30, 7:00
www.theamazingadventuresofawomaninneed.com
triadnyc.com

In the prologue to her debut solo show, The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need — which streamed during the pandemic and now returns to the Triad for an encore run monthly Saturdays beginning March 12 — Naima Mora, wearing jeans and a tight white tank top, holding a pink rose, describes the day in Harlem in 2002 when she realized she needed to turn her unhappy, unsatisfying life around. “I sit alone in my room, on my bed, wondering how I got here, wondering why I’m in this hell of a city, wondering why I’m killing myself to be here, wondering why my hair is falling out, wondering why I partied all night shoveling drugs up my nose, wondering why I’m sabotaging myself,” she says. “And then, I have to cradle myself, be gentle with myself, fall in love with myself, breathe and try to forget the last eight hours, and then forgive myself: forgive myself for being a drunk, for wanting insatiable fun to fill a void and forget the disappointment that I have with myself. And to myself, in my room, on my bed, guilt having settled in, and a little bit of a panic attack, just a little bit, I think to myself, I forgive you. I forgive you for being a fucking mess.”

Mora then admits, “Now, I’ve lived many lives: a supermodel, a crazy woman, and a gold digger, but I still haven’t really lived. So why not tell my story. I need to tell my story. I need to get this shit out of my body and out of my head. I need to rid myself of this self-inflicted destruction.” For the next seventy-five minutes, Mora portrays each of those characters, Penelope the supermodel, who can’t get a runway job anymore; the quirky Joanne, who suffers miscarriages and spends time in a psychiatric hospital; and Marisol Yanette Arnelis Rodriguez Lopes, a ritualistic woman facing too much solitude, offering such life lessons as “Get Your Hands Off My Peach Fuzz” and “Checkmate the Seduction: Train the Eggplant.” The set features a chair, a table, and a couch, a few props, and a screen on which photographs are projected.

An America’s Next Top Model winner, actress, author, and inspirational speaker, Mora who was born in Detroit in 1984, is barely recognizable in the roles, immersing herself fully into them, each with very different costumes, accents, hair, and movement. Directed and cowritten by Brooklyn native Marishka S. Phillips, The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need is a deeply intimate tale that also provides a roadmap for personal introspection; watching Mora deal with her issues so openly is likely to encourage audiences to do the same.

The virtual show I saw was recorded live with an audience at the Triad on October 16, 2021; it will be back at the Upper West Side theater for four performances, March 12, April 9, May 14, and June 18. Mora bravely puts herself out there as she battles her demons in public; she also traced the development of the play on social media. In a Twitter post last fall, she wrote, “My director is pushing me to my limits this week. Asking me to expand and literally stretch my artistic muscle for our show coming up in just 2 days!!! This has truly been a transformative experience.” It should be even more transformative now that it’s back in person.

CELEBRATING MOLIÈRE’S 400th BIRTHDAY

Who: Lisa Gorlitsky, Margaret Ivey, Postell Pringle, Adam Gopnik, Erica Schmidt, Comédie-Française
What: Celebration of Molière’s quadricentennial
Where: FIAF, Florence Gould Hall and Skyroom, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
When: March 10-12, 24, 30, $20-$45 (three-event package $75)
Why: Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was born into a bourgeois family in early 1622 in Paris. Nicknamed “le Nez” because of his relatively large proboscis, he eventually became better known as poet, playwright, and actor Molière. In celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of his birth, the French Institute Alliance Française is hosting a trio of special events. Taking place March 10-12 at 7:30 ($45) at FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall, “Molière Turns 400: 17th Century Paris Meets 21st Century New York” consists of staged excerpts, complete with sets, costumes, and live music, from The Misanthrope, The School for Wives, and Tartuffe, with Lisa Gorlitsky, Margaret Ivey, and Postell Pringle and directed by Lucie Tiberghien, the founding artistic director of Molière in the Park, which performed livestreamed adaptations of all three works during the pandemic lockdown. The March 10 presentation will be followed by a reception.

Ivo van Hove’s adaptation of Molière’s uncensored Tartuffe screens at FIAF March 24

On March 24 at 7:00 ($25), New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik and director Erica Schmidt will be at the FIAF Skyroom for the talk “Modernizing Molière,” available in person and via livestream. Gopnik contributed the foreword to Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations, while Schmidt directed Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid at Bard SummerScape in 2012, starring her husband, Peter Dinklage. The fête concludes March 30 at 7:00 ($35) in Florence Gould Hall with a screening of Molière’s uncensored Tartuffe or the Hypocrite by Comédie-Française, directed by Ivo van Hove from the original script, which was censored by Louis XIV in 1664; the filmed version stars Christophe Montenez and features a score by Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat.