- OTHER MEDIA
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- review of The False Servant in the SF Bay Guardian by Robert Avila
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- In Abydos Theater's razor sharp production of Pierre Marivaux's classic
18th-century French comedy, love, gender, and sexual desire prove as fluid
as money – and all four are bound up together in a continual, erotically
charged dance that confirms the observation: "In this life, we are
all servants of someone or another." A wealthy young woman (Megan
Smith) goes in disguise as a chevalier to discover the full intentions
of the man she is thinking of marrying, the slick and utterly mercenary
Lelio (Jonathan Leveck). Pretending to befriend Lelio man to man, Chevalier
agrees to help him out by seducing away his fiancée, the not-quite-as-wealthy
Countess (Beth Wilmurt), but soon goes some way toward wooing for its own
sake. Reveling in her role as a man, Chevalier must pay hush money to a
pair of servants (Joseph Estlack and Sam Misner) whose venal and carnal
appetites are whetted to distraction, in all directions, by the scent of
a "juicy intrigue." Director Jessica Heidt's energetic Jazz-Age
staging blends seamlessly with a fresh and lucid new translation-adaptation
by Ann and George Crowe, while the physically stylized yet coolly assured
performances of her fine cast strike a winning balance between the play's
broad comedy and thematic subtlety.
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