Molière’s “Imaginary Invalid” opens at Bard SummerScape this Friday, July 13
Bard SummerScape 2012 offers a new, groundbreaking production of Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid starring Peter Dinklage and directed by Erica Schmidt, with ten performances starting on Friday, July 13, 2012. A classic comedy of manners, blending satire with farce in an indictment of the medical profession, The Imaginary Invalid offers a scathing social and political commentary that retains its freshness and bite more than three hundred years after it was written in 1673. Bard SummerScape’s all-male production is the brainchild of husband-and-wife team Dinklage and Schmidt, following their successful collaboration on Bard’s Uncle Vanya; Dinklage, the Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning stand-out star of HBO’s Game of Thrones, puts on women’s dress to join a stellar cast directed by Schmidt, the creator of three previous hit Bard productions. The Imaginary Invalid will be presented in ten performances between July 13 and 22 in Theater Two of the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, a major architectural landmark on Bard College’s stunning Hudson River campus. The annual SummerScape Gala Benefit dinner precedes the July 14 evening performance.
Through comedies of manners like The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, The Miser, and The Imaginary Invalid, Molière (1622–73) satirized the hypocrisy and pretension of the ancien régime, raising comedy to the pitch of great art, and setting standards by which it has been judged ever since. Targeting both hypochondriacs and the medics who exploit them, The Imaginary Invalid’s protagonists include the wealthy Argan, who obsessively doses his imagined complaints with costly treatments and tonics; his quack doctor, Mr. Purgon; and his maidservant Toinette, whose wily good sense provides a foil for her master’s lack of it. The playwright himself undertook the title role in the original production; with macabre irony, he hemorrhaged during the fourth performance, and – despite managing to complete the show – died later that evening. His final creation, however, lives on. As American Theatre critic Misha Berson points out:
“Science long ago rejected the bloodletting, purging, and bizarre enemas that were standard curatives in 17th-century France. But though those antiquated practices loom large in The Imaginary Invalid, the play is really about pomposity, greed, and self-delusion – human follies that never go out of style.”
Bard’s all-male cast includes Ethan Phillips, best known from TV’s Star Trek: Voyager, in the title role. Donnie Keshawarz (The Sopranos, 24, Law and Order, Lost, The Adjustment Bureau) plays Argan’s lawyer brother, Béralde. The new production reunites Preston Sadleir and Zach Booth from Off-Broadway’s Me, Myself & I, in cross-dressing roles as Argan’s duplicitous wife and maligned daughter. Anchoring Bard’s first-rate company – as the spirited and savvy maid, Toinette – is Peter Dinklage, “the star attraction” (New York Times) of SummerScape 2008’s Uncle Vanya; hero of The Station Agent; and winner of Emmy, Golden Globe, Satellite, and Scream Awards for his role in the current HBO series The Game of Thrones.
Erica Schmidt, whose numerous honors include Princess Grace, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Obie Awards, returns to lead The Imaginary Invalid’s artistic team. She is the creator of three previous SummerScape offerings: The Tender Land (2006), The Sorcerer (2007), and Uncle Vanya (2008), of which Variety observed:
“A Chekhov production demands a balancing act…or else part of the play’s richness will be lost. In her staging of Uncle Vanya at Bard College’s SummerScape Festival, director Erica Schmidt, aided by a sterling team of creatives, gets the balance right.”
Theater at Bard SummerScape 2012
Molière (1622–73)
The Imaginary Invalid (“Le malade imaginaire,” 1673)
Cast:
Argan: Ethan Phillips
Toinette: Peter Dinklage
Béline: Zach Booth
Angélique: Preston Sadleir
Béralde: Donnie Keshawarz
Cléante: Danny Binstock
Mr. Diafoirus / Mr. Purgon: Damian Young
Thomas Diafoirus: Henry Vick
Mr. Fleurant / Mr. Bonnefoy: Kevin Cahoon
Artistic team:
Director: Erica Schmidt
Costume design: Andrea Lauer
Set design: Laura Jellinek
Lighting design: David Weiner
Friday, July 13, 8 pm *
Saturday, July 14, 3 pm
Saturday, July 14, 8 pm +
Sunday, July 15, 3 pm *
Wednesday, July 18, 3 pm
Thursday, July 19, 8 pm
Friday, July 20, 8 pm
Saturday, July 21, 3 pm
Saturday, July 21, 8 pm †
Sunday, July 22, 3 pm *
Tickets: $45
* Round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available exclusively to ticket holders for this performance. The round-trip fare is $30 and reservations are required. To make a reservation, call the box office at 845-758-7900.
† Round-trip shuttle between the MetroNorth train station in Poughkeepsie and Bard is available exclusively to ticket holders for this performance. The round-trip fare is $20 and reservations are required. To make a reservation, call the box office at 845-758-7900. Shuttle service is available for all performances of the opera.
+ SummerScape Gala Benefit dinner and post-performance party.
SummerScape theater performances are held in Theater Two in Bard’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and celebrated since its opening as a major architectural landmark in the region.
Performances of The Imaginary Invalid have been underwritten by the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation.
Highlights of the Bard SummerScape Festival 2012
Culture at the crossroads in Belle Époque France will be explored at the Bard SummerScape festival, which once again features a sumptuous tapestry of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, keyed to the theme of the 23rd annual Bard Music Festival. Presented in the striking Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s bucolic Hudson River campus, the seven-week festival opens on July 6 with the first of three performances by France’s Compagnie Fêtes galantes, and closes on August 19 with a party in Bard’s beloved Spiegeltent, which returns for the full seven weeks.
This year’s Bard Music Festival explores “Saint-Saëns and His World,” and some of the great French composer’s most innovative compatriots provide other SummerScape highlights, including Emmanuel Chabrier’s opéra-comique The King In Spite of Himself in a first staged revival of the original 1887 version; Molière’s final comedy of manners, The Imaginary Invalid (1673); and a film festival, “France and the Colonial Imagination.” Together, Bard’s offerings present a vivid portrait of a dazzlingly creative and colorful era in European history: a Golden Age of promise and possibility that came to end with the tragedy of World War I. A list of key performance dates follows below.
SummerScape 2012: other key performance dates by genre
MUSIC
Bard Music Festival, Weekend One: “Saint-Saëns and His World: Paris and the Culture of Cosmopolitanism” (August 10–12)
Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two: “Saint-Saëns and His World: Confronting Modernism” (August 17–19)
Round-trip coach transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available on August 10, 12, 17, and 19, for particular Sosnoff Theater performances. Round-trip shuttle transportation between the MetroNorth train station in Poughkeepsie and Bard is also available for some of the performances. A fare will be charged and reservations are required for coach and shuttle transportation. Check the website for schedules and details.
OPERA
Emmanuel Chabrier: The King in Spite of Himself †
Sosnoff Theater
July 27* and August 3 at 7 p.m.
July 29* and August 1 and 5* at 3 p.m.
Tickets: $30, $60, $70, $90
DANCE
Compagnie fêtes galantes
July 6* and 7† at 8 pm
July 8* at 3 pm
Sosnoff Theater
Tickets: $25, $40, $45, $55
* Round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available for this performance. The round-trip fare is $30 and reservations are required.
† Round-trip shuttle between the MetroNorth train station in Poughkeepsie and Bard is available for this performance. The round-trip fare is $20 and reservations are required. Shuttle service is available for all performances of the opera.
FILM FESTIVAL
“France and the Colonial Imagination”
Thursdays and Sundays, July 12 – August 12 at 2 p.m. or 7 p.m.
Ottaway Film Center
Tickets: $8
SPIEGELTENT
Cabaret, Family Fare, and SpiegelClub
Cabaret $25; Family Fare $15 ($5 for child under 18); SpiegelClub $5
Bard SummerScape Ticket Information
For tickets and further information on all SummerScape events, call the Fisher Center box office at 845-758-7900 or visit www.fishercenter.bard.edu.