Playwright: adapted by David Ives from the play, Le Legataire Universel, by Jean Francois Regnard. At: Chicago Shakespeare Theatre at Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave. Tickets: 312-595-5600; www.chicagoshakes.com; $48-$88. Runs through: Jan. 17
Have you heard the one about the rich old man who wants a young wife to share his bed and nurse his ailments? Sure you have—every culture since antiquity boasts at least one story with this premise. Instead of laying false claim to its invention, however, playwrights nowadays freely admit to recycling dusty ( and safely uncopyrighted ) potboilers for their own purposes. Among those seeking to elevate such makeovers from grad-school exercises to big-budget spectacle is David Ives, who looks for his source material to Moliere wannabe Jean Francois Regnard's 1708 romp.
Updating a period play to conform to modern sensibilities is more complicated than imagined, though, and each new experiment reveals new precepts for success—the wisdom of writing your adaptation before incorporating original text, or constructing the final scenes first, thus guaranteeing as much punch at the finish as at the start. To this list may be added the necessity of understanding the theatergoing experience of both the way-back-then age and the proposed reboot—a principle that Ives chooses to ignore.
A night at the theater in the 18th century meant a five-act play whose adherence to neoclassical conventions supported numerous plot complications ( even as it encouraged spectator attention to wander ). Converting this amount of action to 21st-century running times is not simply a matter of speeding up the delivery, but removing huge portions of decorative, but redundant, wordplay as well. For example, when you open your play with three potty jokes—five, if we include the ottoman that resembles a hemorrhoid cushion and the farting noises that accompany the decrepit clock's chimes—it might be prudent to restrict any additional toilet humor, especially served up in clusters of rhymed couplets, to under a dozen speeches.
Surprisingly, Ives' gobs of gastrointestinal gags in no way obstruct director John Rando's live-action cartoon stunt show—did I mention the trio of Miss Piggy look-alikes and a character wearing Lord Farquaad dwarf prosthetics? Kevin Depinet's ornate set invites defilement ( Freudians, take note ). Paxton Whitehead's geriatric lothario is a veritable symphony of rheumy-phlegmy-necrotic-dyspeptic wheezes. Chicago Shakespeare Theatre ( CST ) subscribers can sway to the iambic pentameter, snicker at the Shakespeare samples and smile like good sports when openly reviled across the fourth wall. Why not? It's not as if they can repeat any of these scatological sallies to their co-workers the next day. CST's holiday treat may appear sumptuous, but will likely leave you only empty and gassy in the morning.
