One of the sad things about theatre today, for me at least, is the lack of opportunity to see the world’s great classic plays performed on stage, with all-star casts in the West End and subsidised theatres, in the way I was able to do when I was younger.
I haven’t seen a comedy by Molière for a very long time and was delighted that a production of Molière’s The Miser, which had been successfully staged by the Stratford Festival in Canada in 2022, had been filmed live for television and was now available online.
I have to admit I should have preferred to have seen Molière’s satire on avarice in its proper period (1668) rather than a modern update. And I had a major problem with Ranjit Bolt’s very free translation.
The script has been popularised too much to suit modern taste. There are too many jarring modern vulgarities (e.g, “You impotent little shit!”) and too many jarring Canadian references (for an easy laugh), which constantly made me feel I wasn’t watching the play Molière wrote.
Harpagon, a very rich old miser with two children, is a comic monster, who is passionately obsessed with money. Money is his best friend, his support, his consolation, his joy. Without his money, it is impossible for him to live.
The high spot of the play and his performance is a long and famous soliloquy when he thinks he has been robbed of all his money and becomes hysterical. Imagining himself to be in the middle of a laughing, jeering crowd, he madly harangues the Stratford audience, accusing them of stealing his money. The speech is much truncated. Some of the best lines have gone.
Colm Feore, no ogre, is not able to have the impact he could have had and the very final image of him all alone on a bare stage, cradling his moneybox, is too quick to have the pathos it aims for, on film at any rate.
Despite my reservations, I still enjoyed Antoni Cimolino’s crowd-pleasing production because it was funny on its own terms and well-acted by the whole company. There is a particularly good comic performance by Qasim Jahn as Harpagon’s son who discovers his dad is in in love with the girl he intends to marry and she is liable to become his stepmother instead of his wife.
Jamie Mack is very good, too, as a smug rich young man, who is in love with Harpagon’s daughter and has got himself employed as his butler to be near her and win his favour.
There is an amusing scene when he and Harpagon are talking at cross-purposes.
The Stratford Festival’s The Miser can be watched online by following this link.
To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website. 
