The Public Theater production of Moliere's classic Tartuffe will begin its reign at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park Aug. 10 for a run through Sept. 5. The Public's Delacorte season began in June with Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Tartuffe concerns a venal and libidinous religious hypocrite who holds a household under his thrall until being exposed for what he is. When first presented in 1664 France, the sharp satire created such a furor that the pious of Paris suppressed the play. It was not performed for another three years, and then in an altered version.
The company of the Moliere comedy includes Wendell Pierce as Cleante, J. Smith-Cameron as Elmire, Dana Ivey as Madame Pernelle, Dylan Baker as Tartuffe, Charles Kimbrough as Orgon, and Mary Testa as Dorine. Mark Brokaw directs.
Testa, whose supporting role in the Public's On the Town in 1998-99 earned her a Tony Award nomination, replaces the previously announced Andrea Martin, who is busy with another project.
Cameron recently starred on Broadway in Night Must Fall. Among her other varied and many credits are As Bees in Honey Drown, Our Country's Good and Blue Window. Dylan Baker was most recently seen in Second Stage's revival of That Championship Season and in the movie "Happiness."
Ivey's recent New York credits include Sex and Longing and The Last Night of Ballyhoo, both on Broadway. She was seen this past season at Playwrights Horizons in The Uneasy Chair. Her most recent project was the Hartford Stage production of Horton Foote's The Death of Papa May 27-June 27. Kimbrough has also acted at Playwrights Horizons, in A.R. Gurney's Later Life and Sunday in the Park With George, which transferred to Broadway. Though he has many other theater credits, he is best known as Jim Dial, the stiff anchorman from the sitcom "Murphy Brown."
Tartuffe will mark a change of pace for Brokaw, who is best known in New York for his work on contemporary plays such as The Dying Gaul, This Is Our Youth and 2.5 Minute Ride. Regionally, however, Brokaw has recently mounted productions of The Glass Menagerie and A Month in the Country.
