Sword Play, Word Play, Farce What’s Not To Love?

If you are looking for big time drama — heavy plot, serious character development, revelations about the human condition — skip “The Liar.” But if a meringue of rhyming couplets might be welcome, then rush to Shakespeare & Company to giggle, and laugh out loud at David Ives’s translation of the 17th-century French classic by Pierre Corneille. Corneille, who wrote but one comedy among his weighty historical dramas, borrowed the plot from a Spanish play. Ives, on commission from Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., translated the French work for a contemporary audience with timely allusions, puns, and felicitous, if often purposefully tortured, rhymes. The poetry barrels at the audience with relentless velocity and, usually, results in total delight. Even the pre-play admonitions to turn off cell phones and locate emergency exits are in rhyme. Ives, of course, is a master of dialogue. His sensational “Venus in Fur,” nominated for a best play Tony Award last year, was a two-character verbal combat that ended in stunning sexual confessions and role reversals. His monologues are like short stories in themselves, a talent on frequent display in “The Liar.” The plot is preposterous from beginning to curtain call. A handsome bachelor and pathological liar named Dorante (David Joseph, properly self-satisfied in his charming dissimulations) arrives in Paris seeking a rich wife.He enlists Cliton (the excellent David Seldin) as his man servant. Immediately we are served one of the play’s many conceits: While Dorante mixes truth and lies with reckless, mindless abandon, almost as sport, Cliton can tell only the truth. Quickly, Dorante meets two young women, Clarice (Alexandra Lincoln) and Lucrece (Emily Rose Ehlinger). But he confuses one for the other and soon does not know which he loves. (We know it’s Clarice.) Soon his father, Geronte (Jake Berger), his friend, Alcippe (Enrico Spada) and Alcippe’s friend, Philiste (Marcus Kearns) muddy the plot and Dorante declaims evermore outlandish stories to get out of situations his lies have gotten him into. The play ends in a touching, tear-producing moment of self-awareness for Dorante. But this last-moment’s seriousness in no way negates the fun leading to it. Kevin G. Coleman has directed “The Liar” with flair. An energetic, no-one-gets-hurt, comic sword fight between Dorante and Alcippe is a dazzling display of timing and choreography that spills into the audience and moves up and down aisles. The unitary set changes with different signs – “Jardin des Tuileries” or “Place Royale” – and movable interior and exterior furniture. Costumes by Govane Lohbauer clearly have seen lots of prior use; still, they work well enough. But as in all farce, it is the cast that keeps “Liar” racing. Without lightening-quick timing, two hours of ABAB couplets filled with puns, malapropisms and rhymes, both inspired and mangled, might get it all bogged down by its own cuteness.The young players never let that happen. They attack Ives’s translation with serious verve so that the audience — having early on surrendered to the merry lunacy of plot and poetry — has a seriously good time indeed. “The Liar” continues at Shakespeare & Company’s Bernstein Theatre weekends through March 24. Call 413-637-3353 or go to www.shakespeare.org for information and tickets.