Wonderland Theatre ©2003-2009
Dublin Fringe Festival and Wonderland Productions proudly presents

The Miser
A Preview of Wonderland's The Miser

By Jane Brogan

The French have a proverb: à père avare, fils prodigue (a tightwad father engenders a spendthrift son). This is something that Molière, being French, thought only too true and a good plot-catalyst for his classic comic farce, The Miser. However, it wasn't simply the musings observed by 17th century French proverbs that led either Molière to write it in 1668, or Wonderland Productions to choose it as their offering to the 2007 Dublin Fringe Festival, but rather a morbid curiosity in the universal, timeless and fascinating human sickness that is greed.

The success of Wonderland's 2005 Dublin Gay Theatre Festival production of Molière's short play The Love Doctor, inspired Alice Coghlan, writer/director and founder of Wonderland to take on a full-length Molière play. Coghlan who is a French speaker translated The Miser after becoming frustrated with what she felt were stilted English translations, which betrayed the colour and "fire" of Molière's French language. She adapted Molière’s play to Georgian Dublin and into the language of Georgian Dubliners from the street to the town houses.

Coghlan decided to move away from the proscenium arch format of traditional theatre and to present Molière's farce in a manner which would bring his characters to life - as this Miser is literally performed in and around the audience – who are seated in the beautifully restored Georgian sitting rooms of The James Joyce Centre. Breaking down the imaginary "fourth wall" separating the life of the story from the reality of the audience, Wonderland's production of The Miser injects new life into the 350-year- old script.

Because The Miser follows the unities of time, place and action, its performance in this naturalistic setting, where 1668 Paris is substituted with the Dublin of the 1770s, means that the audience literally eavesdrop on the ridiculous pursuits of the miserable Harpagon and his family. What is particularly lovely about this site-specific performance (which is set in real time throughout the course of an afternoon and evening) is that it is staged at dusk, meaning that the natural light changes from daylight to darkness and firelight - thus lending a particularly realistic and magical atmosphere to the entire experience.

As soon as the audience arrives at Harpagon’s home, actors in character and costume will usher them to their seats and help them with their transition from the present to eighteenth century Dublin. The play was adapted to the 1770s to suit both the rooms in which its performed as well as the materialistic values parodied in the story. Coghlan made the choice to adapt the setting, along with her Hibernio-English translation, to this period of economic growth in Dublin's history, in order to highlight the materialistic values of Dublin’s last great economic boom, values which modern Dublin audience will identify with all too well.

The Miser is a funny and hauntingly relevant play, parodying and attacking the bourgeois approach to life and its inevitable cycle of endless discontent. As Declan McGauran who is playing the romantic, extrovert, Cleante, points out "this play is very funny but there is a darkness to the humour; it has reverberations for today's audience as money is still a controlling factor in all our relationships. Everything is commodified now." "I think it's a great play for the Fringe audience" says Connolly Heron, playing Le Flèche, "especially the fact that it is set in Dublin, you see that Dublin hasn't changed much really. I like the fact that it's a comedy and it's light but yet it's also tragic and intense." Coghlan clearly has an interest in capturing the zeitgeist of modern Dublin as well as sampling its moral fibre as her previous hit production which is currently on a national tour, Life Shop till you Drop! was a spoof of the modern self-help culture.

Just watching the fun the actors themselves have in rehearsal is infectious, and it is expected that this site-specific production of The Miser will be highly entertaining and accessible. Using a mixture of Irish Georgian history, a unique and realistic setting, splendid period wigs and costumes and plenty of laughs, Wonderland's The Miser promises to be a carnival of theatre and most definitely one of the highlights of The Fringe this year.
 
“Quite simply superb! Witty, wonderful, Wonderland …
the most promising company since the debut years of Rough Magic”
The Irish Times on Wonderland’s, 'The Miser'

Credits
From Wonderland Productions Ltd.
Starring:
Alberto Albertino, Shadaan Felfeli, David Ferguson, Connolly Heron, Declan McGauran, Eithne McGuinness, Paul Nolan, Martin Phillips, Bernie O'Reilly, Sarah-Jayne Quigley & Helen Smith

The Production Team
Writer/Director: Alice Coghlan
Costume Design: Aisling Nic Eoin & Gillian Hollingsworth
Lighting Design: Helina Patience
Producer: Sean Ramsay
Assistant Director: Charlotte Harrison
Stage Management: Camilla Jade Wilcock & Jean Igoe
Photography & Poster/Flyer Design: mongoliandesign.com