The School for Wives
by Molière, translated by Ranjit Bolt
Georgia Shakespeare Festival, Atlanta
(in repertory through August, Year 3, with Much Ado about Nothing and Cymbeline)
Everybody loves going to the Festival. It's an Atlanta summer institution, a company with a good manager, adequate funding (kudos to the law firm of Alembik, Fine & Callner), and contacts with some of the best talent in the region. They run three shows in repertory from June to August and another in the fall. Good value for money, and the preshow picnic area gives you a chance to work some of the value out of your Williams-Sonoma picnic basket.
Maybe I was just tired and cranky. The School for Wives had everything going for it, and my brain stuck on one thing the whole evening.
Rochelle Barker produced a marvelous set design, a vast birdcage with a geometric street in front. I could explore Barker's sets for a month and never get weary. Chris Kayser in the lead role of Arnolphe gave a splendid performance. The music, lifted and/or adapted from Scott Joplin, was too loud but otherwise OK. Horace, played by Daniel May, was an always-moving vision in white. Karan Kendrick as the unself-conscious beauty Agnès and Courtney Patterson as the limber maidservant Georgette had real physical presences. See? Everything was great. Even the director's (Karen Robinson) concept of a vaudeville show worked.
And the whole time I sat there listening to the script. The Festival did another Ranjit Bolt translation of Molière a couple of years ago, and it gave me the same rash. Right, a technicopoetographical digression: Like all your major French poets, Molière wrote in alexandrines, rhyming couplets of iambic hexameter lines. Well, it is French, and it takes the French a lot of syllables to say things (not a criticism), so twelve to the line is not outlandish. Shakespeare wrote unrhymed lines of ten syllables and got them to sound like human beings talking English; when Richard Wilbur translates French comedies, he writes those same ten-syllable lines but rhymes them for an easy-jointed but rather formal effect. OK so far? The most enjoyable translation of alexandrines that I know of is the Cyrano de Bergerac by Anthony Burgess, who loosened up the ten-syllable line (just a little) and also loosened up Rostand's rhymes (a lot). It is a lovely thing, flowing the way speech does but surprising you every few seconds with a little chime.
Well, leave Wilbur and Burgess aside, because Ranjit Bolt doesn't do that. He writes in lines of eight syllables with fairly strict rhyming in couplets. I'm afraid that in my ears Bolt's poetry goes
Ta-ting, ta-ting, ta-ting, ta-whoomp,
Ta-ting, ta-ting, ta-ting, ta-boomp.
[Repeat till done]
I freely admit that I have many defects, and no doubt this is one. Bolt's scripts don't suit me. I find the rhythm makes me stupid and the rhymes, coming at such short intervals, distract me from what's going on. So I spent the whole evening beating time and cringing. Maybe you will like Bolt's translation better, or not notice it, and you'll have a better time than I did.
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The School for Wives