Événement

Molière's DON JUAN

starring Tonya Beckman as Don Juan

Molière's DON JUAN
translated and adapted by Stephen Wadsworth

Taffety Punk presents Stephen Wadsworth's stunning translation and adaptation of the uncensored script of Molère's "Don Juan", April 2018.

"Stephen Wadsworth's 'Don Juan' is a a Spanish legend layered with the conventions of French drama and commedia dellarte, filtered through a contemporary American lens. Like Wadsworths acclaimed Marivaux revivals, it is an undeniably rich and ambitious piece of work, packed with both spectacle and ideas....At the heart of the enterprise is the character Don Juan. In many versions of the legend, Don Juan is merely a roue, but here hes something more. He is a free-thinker ruled by his passions and his mind and as such, he is totally out of step with his contemporaries, who submit to king and church. He wants what he wants (sex, luxury, revenge) when he wants it, but is not without a guiding philosophy: 'I believe that two and two are four,' he says a rationalist, ahead of his time.

Throughout most of the first act, our sympathies are with the dashing Don Juan, even as he abandons his wife, abuses his underlings and leads a naive peasant girl down the garden path. We respond to his intellectual independence, his lust for life and his disdain for hypocrisy and conformity. Then, in a watershed scene, he taunts a pious beggar, urging the pauper to blaspheme in exchange for a coin. At that moment Don Juans skepticism crosses the line into cruelty, and we begin to share some of Sganarelles disgust with his master."

--Lynn Jacobson, Variety