Clumsy sexual innuendo plays inadvertent homage to Kevin Smith’s backseat-of-a-Volkswagen gag in Mallrats (“back-door intercourse,” in this version)—in fact, most of the play’s humor feels limply derivative of bolder, funnier cinematic poop ’n’ fart jokes, from Blazing Saddles to Dumb and Dumber. (If one were to argue that the majority of the well-heeled audience that thoroughly enjoyed last Saturday’s production has likely never seen Dumb and Dumber, I would concede the point.)

The play’s action feels flattened by the static set design, despite the best efforts of Margulies and local favorite Sharonlee McLean as his maid. The set only opens up at show’s end, when a spooky chorus of masked plague doctors swoops in to remind the audience that this labored farce does, in fact, have a message—it speaks to the dangers of overvaluing the opinions of so-called “experts.” Too bad this perfectly reasonable observation was lost in a haze of fart jokes.

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Fortunately he has a very wise and spunky servant named Toinette and an adoring daughter, Angelique. Argan decides to marry off his daughter to a doctor (which she has never met), while in the meantime she has fallen in love with the dashing Cleante. Toinette plots to demonstrate to Argan Beline’s scheming ways and convince him to let Angelique marry Cleante.

It was the last play Moliere wrote, and ironically, he collapsed during its fourth performance (during which he was portraying the lead role, Argan). I’ve never seen a Moliere play, so I had no standard of comparison. After reading the full plot summary (it was designed to be a three-act, even-more-complicated play), I was grateful that PCS chose to stage a shorter adaptation! I also read the critical reviews on Willamette Week and the Oregonian Web sites, in addition to Chris Coleman’s fascinating discussion with the Oregonian theater critic. It’s not the first time that I’ve attended a play and disagreed with the critics.

As always, the play was beautifully staged and costumed. We laughed out loud several times. I poked Mike a few times, too, as he is wont to be overly dramatic when he is feeling sick (Chris is prone to this tendency, too). When we were first married and he felt under the weather, he’d moan “It’s been nice knowing you!”

I had no idea that doctors used to wear getups like this! My sister is a physician—wonder if she’s ever thought of wearing such a costume?

I enjoyed this madcap comedy and especially appreciated the acting of Argon (world-class actor David Margulies) and Toinette (the always-wonderful Sharonlee McLean), and the overacting by John Wernke and Christine Calfas.

Even though medicine is much more reliable and ethical than it was in 1673, the play did bring to mind the modern comeback of “colonic irrigation,” which people actually voluntarily request and are convinced will bring about improved health. These treatments can cost $55 to $95 a session, and typically a series of sessions are recommended. The main character, Argon, loves his enemas. Colonic irrigation is a prettier word, but an enema is still an enema, whatever you call it!

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As broad as the humor is, this is the kind of play that relies heavily on its players. I think the stage was set (forgive the theatrical expression but somehow I can’t come up with another right now) for the audience to have a good time by the opening sequence of Argan sitting in his chair, looking through his medical bills and lamenting his bad health. Feeling for his pulse and wondering if he’s dead. David Margulies’ Argan is sweetly naive as well as funny so you fall in love with him. In fact, I think the sequences where Argan worries over and “works” his maladies were some of my favorite parts of the show because they were so charming.

Margulies’ Argan is someone you want to mother, even if he’s infuriating. And because of this, the interaction between Argan and his maid and sometimes-willing confidant Toinette has a sweetness behind the banter. Toinette is played by Sharonlee McLean. Funny and particular as always. I like her in everything I see her in, which is a lot.

[Since I’m posting pictures, look at the costumes. Really neat. Of course, I had an expert in historical fashions with me, and Stephen was impressed. We had a really interesting conversation about the set and costume design, which Stephen said looked to be inspired by the Dutch masters. The set looked like one of those lovely Dutch interiors that have inspired Stephen more recently in his own painting—the lines of the room and the sunlight pouring through the window—and he said the wardrobe went right along with that style. Consistent and well done.]

And Christine Calfas! Another standout. She can’t help but fill the stage with her energy and her presence. Her part (Beline) is written to be so one-sided and unsympathe-tic that, if they put a lesser actress - even a pretty good actress - in that part, it could come off irritating. But Christine Calfas is hilarious and sexy. Her rant toward the end of the performance is so sumptuous, you wish you could take all the hates you’re afraid to voice (especially the guilty ones) and have yourself a rant as good as hers.

For the couple of other performances I’d like to make note of, I’m going to let Stephen do the talking [in quotes], since I thought what he said was very apt.

John Wernke’s Cleante [flinging his long, blond hair around… in love with his beauty, in love with his theatre, in love with Argan’s daughter]: “Sweet knucklehead.”

Danny Wolohan’s Claude: “A cross between the Chicken Lady and George W. Bush.”

There are three tiny moments, three tiny perfect outbursts that each last a second or two. One belongs to Wolohan, one to Wernke, one to Calfas. I won’t spoil them by trying to describe them, but I’ll just say: these alone are worth the price of a ticket.

*[“fàrt” – see? classy!]

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Maybe we’re attracted to Molière’s anarchism, the way his plays overturn the hierarchy of parents and children, masters and servants. Or maybe we just like the sophomoric humor. Constance Congdon, whose liberal adaptation of The Imaginary Invalid plays this month at PCS, seems to favor the latter explanation. Her script possesses all the maturity of The Ren & Stimpy Show. Chris Coleman’s production puts a lot of impressive talent onstage, festooned with bright, polished frippery, all in service of a hundred fart gags.

Coleman’s invalid is David Margulies, an exceptional actor whose credits encompass The Sopranos, Angels in America and Ghostbusters (he played the mayor). He brings to the role of Argan a befuddled, doddering disposition and Walken-esque cadence that makes the flatulent, selfish coot—who attempts to marry his daughter off to a preening doctor to save on the unnecessary medical care he delights in receiving—more likeable than he has any right to be. He is supported by our own Sharonlee McLean and Christine Calfas as Argan’s maid and wife, the very dashing John Wernke as his daughter’s would-be lover and Barry del Sherman who, as the quack Doctor Argan, keeps better comedic time than anyone else onstage.

I don’t want to sound dismissive, especially since most other viewers seemed to enjoy the show wholeheartedly, but for all the great costumes and vigorous craziness, the flatulence and ribaldry, I was bored and confused. Why does one character have a thick French accent, and another speak like a gay George W. Bush? Why does the set employ the severe forced perspective of a cardboard theater diorama? And how long can we reasonably be expected to laugh at diarrhea jokes before they just get gross?

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Here’s the story rundown: An old man is ill and overly reliant on his doctor. His daughter is young, beautiful, and in love. His new wife is a schemer. His maid knows the truth. Hilarity ensues. The result, at Portland Center Stage through February 6, is a frothy, frivolous night at the theater that fizzes past without leaving much of a trace behind. But there’s plenty of fun to be had before that curtain comes down; in fact, this may be the merriest band of scenery-chewers ever to grace a proscenium, and the gang of players brings wit to a spate of scatological humor that would be a tiresome slog in less skilled hands.

Draped in sumptuous period costumes by designer Jeff Cone, the cast is delightful to look at. John Wernke, as the romantic hero Cleante, shows comedic mastery in his luxurious blond-locked wig, and he has such a way with a pair or preposterously pleated pantaloons, that I might be tempted to sit through the entire production again just to re-watch his entrance.

Hollye Gilbert and Christine Calfas both do amusing turns respectively as Angelique (the angelic, virtuous daughter, huh, really?) and Beline, the scheming, wicked step mother (huh, really). Danny Wolohan, plays Claude, a doltish rival for Angelique’s affections, as a slack-jawed, screen-staring, rugby-jersey-wearing galoot—despite being trussed up in tights and festooned with ribbons. The combination of character and costume is silly, and a little weird, and totally wonderful to watch.

But it is David Margulies who holds center stage in this production. He is Argan, a hypocondriac invalid who may (or many not) be dying at a moment’s notice. Margulies brings a respectful balance to his role, playing a querulous old fart for laughs, but unearthing beneath the flowing brocade dressing gown and silly night cap, a vulnerable little old man, genuinely consumed with the aches and pains and treatments of his age and his unspecified illnesses.

Audience favorite Sharonlee McLean, plays the tough and grudgingly devoted maid, Toinette. She is the keeper of any and every ounce of good sense in this play, and as such she delivers a lot of punchlines with impeccable timing, a welcome breath of salty air, and an unwavering (though often unspoken) fondness for her charges. McLean also spends a fair amount of time opening and closing the large windows and dressing the canopied bed on William Bloodgood’s regal single-room set.

Constance Congdon’s adaption released Molière from obscure manners, but drops her audience pretty consistently into conversations about cow poop. It feels modern and breezy—on the other hand, that’s an awful lot of fart jokes.

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First and foremost, on the evidence of opening-weekend performances of both, is David Margulies. The veteran actor, who stars as the stupendously vapid hypochondriac Argan in Center Stage’s glossy and handsomely appointed “Imaginary Invalid,” settles deep inside the heart if not the soul of Molière’s art. Margulies’ sweet performance carries hints of Harpagon, the penny-pinching central figure of Molière’s satire “The Miser”: Argan deeply resents the steep apothecary bills for all those drugs he’s so eager to consume and hatches a plot to marry off his daughter to a young doctor so he can get free medical attention.

But Margulies and director Chris Coleman concentrate on something else in the man’s makeup – a touching, gullible tenderness that makes Argan, for all his foolishness and self-obsession, the most likable person in the play. It’s a purposely doddery performance, filled with an affection that the role doesn’t always get. Crowd-pleaser? You bet, and deservedly so.

But for all its surface frivolity, something’s missing from Center Stage’s “Invalid”—the sense that what’s happening inside Argan’s anarchic household is connected to the larger culture outside its doors. Molière was a favorite of King Louis XIV but for all that was in constant political hot water, because he was forever insulting dangerous targets, from the church and austere moralizers to France’s nouveau riche. (He wasn’t too fond of the medical profession, either.)

Key to any understanding of Molière’s plays and the culture in which they existed is an appreciation of their sense of danger, a heightened stake that playwright Constance Congdon’s adaptation carries mostly by a few flatulence jokes and a little heavy-handed sexual innuendo. It’s the Jack Black school of cultural commentary, which, whatever it may miss in genuine satirical force, is always good for a few laughs.

Any theater company that produces Molière today is counting on the hope that the playwright’s wit will translate into reliable laughter for a 20th-century audience. “Translate” is the key word here. Unlike Shakespeare or the great English Restoration comedians, who were working at roughly the same time as Molière, all English-language productions are translations and free adaptations of the French originals, torn not only from their own time and place, but also from their linguistic foundations. Molière, even in the best of circumstances, exists for us at several removes.

At Twilight Rep, director Tiffany Longworth’s response is to use the skin of “The Doctor Despite Himself” and stuff it with something completely new—or at least, different.

The cast-driven script is loosey and goosey, littered with topical allusions and tomfoolery. The company approached the production as an opportunity to do commedia dell’arte (not a bad decision: Molière took advantage of the old stock characters and situations, and “Doctor” begins with something reminiscent of a Punch and Judy show) but eventually turned to the world of Hanna-Barbera cartoons for inspiration. The result, while energetic and fitfully amusing, is erratic and haphazardly shaped—low-comedy melodrama that is Molière in name and plot outline only.

Congdon, best known for her play “Tales of the Lost Formicans,” presents more intriguing possibilities in her adaptation, a modern theatrical response to Molière’s original. She’s tightened the script for “Invalid,” eliminating and combining a few characters, with no real loss, and she pays attention to character and language.

But her script also emphasizes broad slapstick over wit and wordplay, making it in many ways a different sort of comic experience. Congdon underlines things so the audience doesn’t miss the point. But the point isn’t so much getting the point as it is appreciating what ought to be the effortless flow and surprise sting of the comedy.

Compared to many older adaptations, this one explains a lot in words, verbalizing what instead might be done by actorly implication, from sexual byplay to the dastardly intentions of Argan’s scheming wife Beline (a spit-and-claw Christine Calfas) and her salacious toady De Bennefoi (Danny Wolohan).  It’s like the difference between burlesque and nude dancing: one is tantalizing, the other just obvious.

A lot of older adaptations hark back to the style of Restoration Comedy and often to the “rhymey-rhymey-rhyme stuff, coupled with the fancy-pants costumes and the weird situations” that director Coleman deplores in his program notes. Those things can feel stuffy, but David Hirson proved with “La Bete,”  his 1991 iambic-pentameter comedy that is perhaps the best contemporary updating of Molière, that there’s plenty of life in the old couplets yet.

As with Shakespeare, a little knowledge of the plays’ historical grounding is a good thing. In “The Imaginary Invalid,” Molière is partly playing around with the conventions of pastoral comedy—especially in the impromptu “opera” of Angelique (Hollye Gilbert) and Cleante (John Wernke),  which serves the double purpose of satirizing the intellectual thickness of Argan and the doctors, who can’t see the young lovers’ plot unfolding before their eyes. 

Center Stage regular Sharonlee McLean, as the know-it-all servant Toinette, adeptly demonstrates Molière’s counterthrust to his age’s enshrinement of Reason: Life consists of the successful management of anarchy, a pragmatism best understood and carried out by the lower classes.

Center Stage’s “Invalid” enjoys the advantages of a terrific design (William Bloodgood sets, Jeff Cone costumes, Peter Maradudin lighting) and director Coleman carries through the script’s broad approach smoothly. Friday’s opening-night audience gave the show a rousing standing ovation, and Saturday’s “Doctor Despite Himself” audience in the tiny Shoebox Theater guffawed throughout the show, too. Still, in both cases, I’m left with a sense of opportunities missed.

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