School for Lies

When I sat down in the theatre to watch Swine Palace’s first show in a weeklong run of  the play School for Lies, I had no idea what to expect. A little preliminary sleuthing revealed that the play is an adaptation of French playwright Molière’s comic farce, The Misanthrope, by Tony Award-nominated David Ives. There would be lavish costumes, I read; there would be jokes. The entire play would be performed in rhyming couplets, some of which would end on certain four-letter words. There would be singing, rapping, and reading of poetry so bad it ends up the center of a slander lawsuit. There would be love and misunderstanding, secret letters and unwarranted proposals—characters that at once could prod an audience into guffaws of laughter and stir it into odd solemnity as bits of truth seep out from the growing heaps of the play’s titular lies.

To an unfamiliar like me, all of this seemed rather thrown-together, especially for a setting in 1666 France. And perhaps Ives does deliver a silly concoction of social mishaps and foppish characters; but at the play’s conclusion two hours later, I knew that what I had read was all absolutely true—and it all, magically, came together with nothing short of surprised satisfaction.

Our hero’s name is Frank, a new guy in town renowned for his general repulsion of society at large (“I treat all men with uniform disgust” he says at one point), yet plagued by the constant company and conversation of Paris’ foppish upper class.

Only the beautiful widow Celimene, the witty matron of the most popular salon in Paris, manages to escape Frank’s cruel classifications. In what appears to be a common, near-daily occurrence in Ives’ reimagined France, Celimene has been sued for slander, something that usually wouldn’t faze her but for the fact that the slander in question appears in the form of incriminating letters stolen from her personal desk (stolen, I might add, by a hilariously crass, Bible-thumping neighbor played by Addie Barnhart, an MFA acting candidate at LSU).

Meanwhile Philinte, an acquaintance of Celimene, takes revenge on her and Frank for teasing him about a rumored penchant for cross-dressing. Philinte tells Celimene that Frank is the king’s secret brother, and thus would be able to help Celimene out of her precarious lawsuit with the letter thief. Philinte also convinces Frank that Celimene—who is also being pursued by three of the goofiest suitors in France—is in love with him. The ill-advised courtship, fueled by these lies and streams of others lent by Celimene’s misguided cousin Eliante and—in easily the funniest scene in the play—a surprise visit from “the queen,” heats to a boiling point that ultimately reveals the heart of the matter.

Although definitely not suited for audience members unable to get into PG-13 movies on their own, School for Lies lives up to its reputation for comedy more than its reputation for vulgarity. Anyone with an appetite for biting social commentary tinged with clever wordplay will still find a home in this topsy-turvy salon, with more to each quip than simple rhymes. An intellectual and entertaining romp, School for Lies delivers the best of both worlds in its intriguing plot and five-star performances (plus, those who stopped by to see Romeo and Juliet this season will be excited to see many of the same actors in vastly different roles). You don’t want to miss this.

To experience this rib-tickling take on an old French satire, purchase tickets from swinepalace.org or at the door. $10. July 22—26 at 7:30 pm and July 27 at 2 pm.