Arts Week with Judy Murphy

A 17th century play about deceit, confusion and truth which has been updated for modern audiences, will performed in Galway in two weeks’ time when the Abbey Theatre brings its production of Tartuffe to the city’s Black Box Theatre.  Molière’s classic farce, which mocked the hypocrisy and the sanctimony of the 16th century French court, has been adapted for the Abbey by one of Ireland’s foremost playwrights, Frank McGuinness.  The Donegal dramatist has done this in a way that “is very true to Molière,” according to actor Pauline Hutton, who plays servant, Dorine, in the piece

“What Frank has done is inject an earthy tone and that Northern acerbic wit,” says Pauline, who is from Derry and has been acting professionally since she was 17 when she successfully auditioned for the part of Judy in the popular RTÉ soap, Glenroe.

Pauline, who later went on to train in Trinity and is a regular on the Abbey stage, “is really enjoying this show”, which opened at the National Theatre last month.

According to the Irish Examiner reviewer, she ‘shines as Dorine’, the maid who sees right through the villainous Tartuffe (played by Ryan Donaldson), who gains admission to the wealthy Orgon’s home (Frank McCusker is Orgon) by pretending to be a virtuous, pious man.

While McGuinness has stayed true to Molière’s original format of rhyming couplets and the production’s lavish costumes have all the glamour of the mid-1600s, this version of Tartuffe, directed by the Abbey’s Artistic Director, Caitríona McLaughlin, with set and costume design by Katie Davenport, is also very modern.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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