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The Shoebox Theater is almost too intimate—audiences at the aptly named space have to parade across stage to exit. It's a fitting squeeze for Theatre Vertigo's The School for Lies, where theatergoers sit in the social parlor of sharp-tongued widow Celimene (Stephanie Cordell).
Lies is David Ives' update of Molière's The Misanthrope. a comic exposé of forced, 17th-century frilly civility. We meet Celimene on the eve of her court date, when convention dictates she keep the atmosphere in her home light and flirtatious. Enter Frank—a magnetic and constantly irked Nathan Dunkin—who rails against superficiality with the tedium of a college friend who forgot to leave his unchecked idealism in the dorm.
This intersection of parlor society and 21st-century staging becomes a show of anachronisms. Ives' rhyming couplets are dense with heady wordplay, but then comes Celimene freestyle rapping her scathing impersonations. Eliante's pigtails and rainbow-laced Converse seem an unconfident design choice, as though actress Shawna Nordman couldn't convey innocence without a teen's wardrobe (which she can!).
These modern additions already seem outdated, but the play is more successful paying homage to its original. Celimene's duster-style skirts and patent pumps give her the vampiness and authority of a sharp-tongued socialite, and Heath Koerschgen is a foppish delight in a powdered wig in any decade.
This parlor drama is all whimsical show, and JoAnn Johnson's consistent direction, plus flying pastries and rogue glasses of wine, break the fourth wall to let us in on the joke.
SEE IT: The School for Lies is at the Shoebox Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 306-0870. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays through May 9. $20.
WWeek 2015