Molière’s misanthrope here is a bestselling writer in a stylish trouser suit, gender-reversed as Alice and Americanised in the formidable form of Sandra Oh. When an aspiring novelist asks for literary advice, Alice tells her to always make her writing “seductive”.
Is that what playwright Martin Crimp has aspired to do here? His modern-day version is certainly as high-wire an endeavour as his beat-boxing reboot of Cyrano de Bergerac, a French canonical text which he turned into something new, dangerous and yes, extremely seductive.
This reworking of the 17th-century classic simpers in its satire and woos in its human drama, especially in the jittery insecurity that Alice feels in her relationship with the younger Stefan (Tom Mison), an actor, charmer and former alcoholic who is going through an acrimonious divorce. But it is not nearly as intoxicating a seduction.
With sprawling ideas and OTT satire, it is stuffed full of the debates of our time around female empowerment, patriarchy, digital rage, misinformation and the hollow language of “acceptance” with plenty of pops at theatre and bad writing. Not all of these issues seem to belong to a single play; they are bitten off but barely chewed.
The satirical elements are hard to anchor. Who is being satirised and why? The production seems to send up everyone from gen Zers who speak about their authentic selves to women who rail against misogyny, the latter mainly through Alice. She is angry, we hear, again and again, and an uncompromising paragon of truth who takes the mission of truth-telling online with outspoken social media posts. But is she also a sanctimonious prig that Alceste arguably doubles up as in Molière’s play?
And the comedy of manners butts up against the human drama, from the distrust Alice feels in her relationship to the acrimony between Stefan and his ex-wife (Jemima Rooper) and tenderness between Alice and her best friend, John (Paul Chahidi). In these scenes, the play flies, and the return of the comedy feels like an interruption. In the best dramatic moments it contains some riveting acting from Oh, who brings heart, fire, vulnerability and comic timing.
This version incorporates Molière’s subtle reflections on the transformative (or self-delusional?) effects of romantic passion: Alice’s focus on clear-eyed sincerity hits a blind spot in love. “Doesn’t he [Stefan] represent everything you hate?” John asks, wryly.
There is some very fine direction by Indhu Rubasingham too on Robert Jones’s set of drawing rooms, which are marked by modern opulence, but with edges of 17th-century baroque. The drawing room lifts off in the final moments to be replaced by candles, chandeliers and bustled gowns amid a sea of empty blackness. It captures a costume party but seems to depart from realism and veer into Molière for surrealists, leaving you suitably disturbed.
As a production it is imperfect but heroic in all it is trying to say about the way we live, how we might live differently and escape the toxicity of the digital world. Except, like Molière’s Alceste, no one else is up for finding a free, honest, corner of the earth. Alice’s flight from dishonesty feels less like liberation than self-elected banishment.
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At the Lyttelton theatre, National Theatre, London, until 1 August
