Pants on Fire: Robey Theatre Company’s “The Great Lover”

CJ Obilom, Tiffany Coty-Goines, and Jenny Cadena (Photo by Jermaine Alexander)

Pants on Fire

Robey Theatre Company’s theatrical excavation of lying in Alexandre Dumas’s comedy, The Great Lover

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Let’s start with the obvious: The Duke is a cad. This would be the French Duke de Richelieu (portrayed with skill and charm by Julio Hanson). De Richelieu is the title character in Alexandre Dumas’s The Great Lover, first produced in 1836 and presented here in a gorgeous and opulently costumed (Naila Alladin Sanders) production by Robey Theatre Company in Los Angeles Theatre Center’s intimate back theater. Director Ben Guillory’s attention to pacing and to the play’s comedic stylings is close to perfect.

It could be said that de Richelieu is an antecedent to England’s Prince Andrew, currently spurned by that nation’s King Charles because of his proximity to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. There’s a distinction, however. Andrew’s contemporary suits and ties are far less sumptuous that de Richelieu’s braided and gold-tinted refinery, including sword and sheath, in conformity with the manners expected at the court of Chantilly, France, 1726, where and when the play is set. And, to be rude, Prince Andrew lacks the charisma that’s so abundant in Hanson’s Duke de Richelieu. One can see how de Richelieu got away with his many subterfuges with women, and why Prince Andrew hasn’t, though both — one real, one fiction — traffic in bribery and deceit. The possibility that some of Andrew’s liaisons were with minors adds yet another layer of — what the best word — rank?

The Great Lover is clearly influenced by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s libertine novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (published in 1782) and its interlocking impulses of sex, power, and politics. We may cluck our tongues at the abuse of power in both works — the use by both men and women of, yes, rank, to sexually manipulate people of lower station with false promises of social elevation and lies about emotional commitment. All of which forms a literary aphrodisiac —  infused with humor, providing that one is sufficiently jaded to dispose of romantic attachments as so much nonsense in what was always a transactional world.

How clever we are! How foolish are they. We get to understand what’s going on before they do: Comedy.

Except that what happened on Epstein Island is not amusing: the abuse of innocence, capitalizing on poverty and desperation. It might be argued, though not persuasively, that a woman of 24 should know better. But a girl of 14?

When do the lies, about the abuse of power in sex and in politics, cease to amuse? That is the question of our age that resonates from Epstein Island to Capitol Hill, and that is why re-staging an 1836 play, written on a different continent and set in 1726, is so weirdly relevant. Not only does it underscore how both literature and history keep rhyming, this production in particular zooms in on how next to impossible it is to exhume the truth of what’s going on under our noses.

One scene in particular struck me to the core: The “victim” (who is ultimately not the real victim) is a fiancée named Gabrielle De Bille-Isle (CJ Obilom in a gorgeous performance). Unbeknownst to Gabrielle, she is the object of a bet made by de Richelieu with her betrothed, a young lieutenant named Sevran (Jason Mimms). The bet is that de Richeleu can bed the first woman to walk in the door within the same evening that she crosses the threshold. That woman, by sheer chance, happens to be Gabrielle.

To  avoid spending too much digital ink disclosing the intricate plotting at work, let’s just say that de Richelieu’s former flame, the elegant, beauty-queen Marquee De Prie (Tiffany Coty-Goines, magnificent), intervenes with the aim of revenging herself against de Richelieu. She does so with letters she forges (a device straight out of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Twelfth Night) that make things appear to be what they’re not. Specifically, Sevran has good reason to mistakenly believe that his fiancée has spent the night bedded with de Richelieu. We, the audience, know the exculpatory facts on the ground, yet Gabrielle is under oath not to disclose those facts to her jealous fiancé, even though her pending marriage, sealed in devotion, is now at stake.

There are a couple of dimensions to this confrontation between Gabrielle and her beau Sevran. The first is Gabrielle’s agony (exquisitely depicted by Obilom) in upholding her oath to keep her mouth shut and watching her future slip away before her eyes. Why doesn’t she simply betray her oath and explain what happened? Honor. Remember that trait?

The other dimension is Sevran’s haughty certainty in charging — no, convicting! — his betrothed of infidelity, in all dimensions of that word: First, he accuses her of bedding a charming cad — for what reason he doesn’t specify, though presumably it’s all fueled by her lust. And then he accuses her of lying about her whereabouts on the night of the alleged sexual encounter with de Richelieu.

Things just get worse when, in scene out of Tartuffe, Gabrielle offers to hide her would-be spouse behind a massive drape, so he can go literally undercover to witness the truth of a “private” conversation between de Richelieu and Gabrielle, that she presumes will result in the Duke’s admitting that they did not have sex that night. But — the Duke then says just the opposite. It’s not because he’s that cunning and devious; rather, it’s because he actually believes that he did have sex with her. He, too has been duped by cleverly contrived circumstance.

It’s a sizzling moment of theater when Mimms’s Lieutenant, nostrils flaring, head perched imperiously on his shoulders, his eyes flickering with certainty and pain, benevolently offers to pardon Gabrielle for her night of passion, because he loves her that much. As though she needs his pardon. (That’s a scene that Henrik Ibsen may well have borrowed for his 1879 A Doll’s House, where banker Torvald offers to “forgive” his wife, Nora, for a “crime” she committed without his understanding the full circumstances. She too, tells him in so many words to take his “pardon” and stuff it.)

Alexandre Dumas was a stunningly prolific and wildly successful French writer who turned to novels after starting his career writing plays. In his day, he ran a kind of literary agency, hiring writers to churn out popular stories (sometimes under his name, sometimes not) based on venal and swashbuckling characters such as killers and sadists. He’s remembered for novels such as The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Christo, and The Man in the Iron Mask.  Contemporaries remarked on his loquaciousness and his raging ego. It’s said he had a huge and generous disposition and could talk, uninterrupted, for hours, particularly when the theme was himself.

His father, a military general, was born in what’s now Haiti, the son of a French nobleman and an African slave. Alexandre Dumas’s mixed-race origins informed much of his attitude, his cynicism born from the overt prejudice he experienced in France, though that bigotry did little to inhibit his commercial success.

Robey Theatre Company, named after Paul Robeson, was founded in 1994 by Danny Glover and Ben Guillory. It defines itself as a Black troupe, though its interests — such as Alexandre Dumas, a 19^th century mixed-race writer from Europe, have in the past expanded into British and French colonialism — extending far beyond the “African-American” descriptor. This production employs mostly Black actors. To give full credit to this deserving cast, the ensemble also includes Talmadge Talib, Joshua Bruce, Kermit Burns, Dane Gbrayes, and Jenny Cadena.

Joel Daavid’s set captures, on this intimate stage, the Baroque essence of Versailles in two rooms — one, an ornate sitting room, used primarily through the action, and a second adjoining study. Each room is centered by a suspended chandlier.

There are a couple of moments when the nimble blend of emotion and comedy get punctured by darts of broad farce. These cause minor, temporary wounds to an otherwise distinguished production.

There are new plays, which run the risk of being too topical to provoke larger insights, and there are unlikely presentations such as this one: These latter appear to have the aim of exhuming texts, and insights, from former centuries — wagering that what people were thinking almost 200 years ago has direct pertinence to what we’re enduring today, and to make an offering with wit and with cautions.

I don’t believe I’m alone in feeling that the United States we grew up with and loved in great part is evaporating before our eyes. We’re all reckoning with that, with an executive branch growing ever more imperial and imperious, unfettered and untethered not just to the other branches of our government, but to the very facts on the ground. To what degree that is unique to our experience, and to what degree the lies and deceits and punditry are all a factor of an empire simply transitioning, as empires have through the millennia, we’re incapable of discerning. What we’re witnessing, or believe that we’re witnessing, may or may not be what’s actually happening.

There’s a significant plot twist in The Great Lover: Seemingly out of the blue, the offstage First Minister to the King (Louis XV) falls out of favor, and with that, a couple of the power brokers on the stage see their power implode, along with the prospect of imprisonment and death. All of this on a whim, on the basis of some accusation that may or may not be valid. This is what happens in places with an all-powerful king, from random power-shifts to revolutions.

In its idiosyncratic way, this silly play, The Great Lover, places that anxiousness on the stage, distilling it and clarifying it.  I sat and observed a theatrical event unfolding on a very small stage. When I left to return to the constrictions of my own life and observations, the world felt just a little bit larger.

The Robey Theatre Company, The Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown LA. Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm, dark Sun., Oct. 18, added matinee Sat., Nov. 8; thru Nov. 9. therobeytheatrecompany.org/ Running time: 100 minutes without intermission.