McGough at the Playhouse…Take Three

McGough Moliere translations are like Arriva busses. You wait ages for one… etc.

Following the successes of Tartuffe and The Hypochondriac, the Liverpool Playhouse will complete a trilogy of Roger McGough adaptations of classic Molière comedies with The Misanthrope in spring 2013. The ‘McGoughière’ team will be reunited with Everyman and Playhouse Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz directing this co-production with English Touring Theatre. The Misanthrope premières at the Liverpool Playhouse in February 2013 before a national tour: and, we have no doubt, will stretch the rhythms and cadences of the rhyming couplet to bizarre and uncharted limits, in a way that the Litherland poet laureate, McGough, can do better than anyone.

It was, there is no doubt, a stroke of genius to let McGough loose on Moliere’s hypocrite-lampooning social comedies: never have 17th century studies of the French court’s mores and moralities seemed quite so relevant. So we’re delighted to be treated to a suitably greedy and indulgent third helping.

“The Misanthrope is widely regarded to be one of Molière’s great plays and deals with a man who makes a decision to always tell the truth whatever the consequences,” says Bodinetz. “It’s a play that looks at the tightrope we all teeter upon between kindness and devastating honesty and asks the question with sometimes hilarious and moving results: Is honesty always the best policy?”

Grab your tickets as soon as you can, we’d say.

The Misanthrope 2012 autumn season PUBLIC BOOKING opens on Monday 29 October. To book tickets telephone Box Office on 0151 709 4776 or go online at www.everymanplayhouse.com.

Liverpool Playhouse
Williamson Square