… bold brilliance …
This play is for everybody who loves words, word play, unexpected puns and rhymes of an unbound imagination. It’s hilarious –and expands one’s sense of the English language.
Tag: David Ives
David Ives does it again — almost. His earlier adaptation of Moliere’s le Misanthrope (1666), renamed The School for Lies (reviewed here in 2011) was an orgy of unending laughter. This adaptation of Regnard’s le Légataire Universel (1708) which he renames The Heir Apparent isn’t as successful although Ives follows his same rules of mod transformation, because Regnard’s play falls short of the brilliance of le Misanthrope.
… triple play …
What a romp! What sheer fun! Moliere would have loved The School For Lies.
And what a record, three for three, for Classic Stage and David Ives:
- 2009: Classic Stage produces Ives’ brilliant play about Spinoza, New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza
- 2010: Classic Stage produces Ives’ Venus in Fur which was a big success and launched Nina Arianda into stardom (though I found it tiresome)
- 2011: Classic Stage produces Ives’ The School for Lies, from Moliere’s The Misanthrope, and they’re right back on brilliant
… SM …
The Marquis de Sade died in 1814, which left over half a century for sadism to languish alone until masochism “arrived” in the 1870 erotic novel Venus in Furs — the author’s name, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, providing the word.
Ives’ play Venus in Fur roughly follows the extreme SM relationship between the man and woman in the novel, which allows for plenty of sadism, masochism, and a beautiful woman in Victoria’s Secret type of lingerie tempting and teasing a man. Voyeurism, sexual revelation, sanctified by touches of social history and the “serious” overtones of a “classic novel” — you can see why someone thought this would be a good play to produce. The play’s repetitive quality and predictability, and — a casting problem — a total lack of chemistry between the actors playing the man and woman, make it boring.