As the play begins, we enter Orgon’s household to find it already in a tizzy: he and his mother (Bianca Del Rio) have transferred their loyalties to Tartuffe, an in-home “spiritual adviser” who has—very much beknownst to everyone but the two of them—fixed his lecherous eye on Orgon’s young wife, Elmire (Amber Gray). Her brother, Cléante (Francis Jue), and Orgon’s two grown children, Damis (Ryan J. Haddad, spitting mad from word one) and Mariane (Emily Davis), question Tartuffe’s motives, as does Mariane’s adored, impecunious fiancé, Valère (Ikechukwu Ufomadu). No one, of course, is quite as forthright as the maid, Dorine (Lisa Kron), who has the soubrette’s license to call ’em like she sees ’em. “Pursuit of godly goals my ass, all he does is constantly harass,” she tuts, while levering her bosom a little higher out of her low-cut corset. (Enver Chakartash designed the extraordinary costumes, which employ baroque silhouettes in plummy red or bubble-gum pink, sometimes over a modern shoe.)journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter