THEATER

The Pearl Theater
Don Juan - Moliere

"Don Juan has just gotten married—so naturally it’s time for him to get out of town. Thus begins the strangest road trip in history; a madcap journey by sea and land in which our “hero” lies, cheats, blusters, and seduces his way across the world—much to the dismay of his honest but dim servant—in an effort to escape his blushing bride’s outraged family. But there’s an unearthly surprise waiting at the end of their road. Perhaps Molière’s most quixotic farce, Don Juan teases the limits of reality, and brings the natural and supernatural into an outlandish partnership to seal the fate of one deliciously unrepentant rascal."

Great little video of several of the scenes...

The New York Times' review...

Review: A Molière-Born Cad for the Ages in ‘Don Juan’

What becomes a legendary scoundrel most? In Jess Burkle’s larkish, winking new adaptation of Molière’s “Don Juan,” directed by Hal Brooks at the Pearl Theater Company, the title character has cascading blond locks, legging-tight metallic pants and a codpiece that could put an eye out.

With a fringed biker jacket, wings sprouting from the shoulder blades, the look (by Anya Klepikov) suggests that Don Juan follows his own rules in fashion as well as love.

But if it seems as if the handsome seducer were dressed in a different century from the people around him, that’s emblematic of the disjointedness of this show, which unfolds on a good-looking set (by Harry Feiner) strewn with overgrown remnants of Classical architecture, surrounded by contemporary walls.

By reframing Molière in modern, colloquial language, Mr. Burkle means to bring “Don Juan” closer to us and have a bit of fun. He succeeds only intermittently, though Mr. Brooks’s production gets one important element absolutely right. Justin Adams plays Don Juan as a comic embodiment of everyone’s awful ex: a beguiling, strutting, sneering bad boy whose capering heart reliably turns to stone the morning after.

The show fares less well with Sganarelle, Don Juan’s clownish valet, who’s fearful of heaven’s wrath and horrified by his unbelieving master’s recklessness. Brad Heberlee, a smart actor who has trouble playing dumb here, can’t find the valet’s pulse. The dialogue, overwritten and too reliant on alliteration, is partly to blame.

The production’s only interlude of hilarity comes when the dimwitted rustic Pierrot (an excellent Pete McElligott) recounts for his beloved, in a mock-Italian accent, how he rescued some drowning men. Mr. McElligott later doubles as a very funny, exasperated Don Carlos, brother to the abandoned Donne Elvire (Jolly Abraham).

Molière’s play is a weird one, what with the talking statue that shows up for dinner, but it’s also rooted in a Christian culture whose rules Don Juan is flouting. Plotwise, Mr. Burkle’s adaptation retains those elements. But in their pursuit of silliness, he and Mr. Brooks never firmly establish that milieu, leaving their antihero without a foil and their play without a context.

Mr. Brooks, the Pearl’s artistic director, is determined to put new translations and adaptations of classics onstage — a laudable impulse. But what you get for trading in something old and elegant isn’t always such a bargain.