ARTSMONDAY: Updates to Classic Amuse the Modern

Philolaches has been throwing a party while his dad is away on business. If the trip was for a weekend and the year was 1985, it would be the makings of a teen movie. If the trip took three years and the year was sometime around 200 B.C., it would apparently make a great Roman comedy.

“The Mostellaria” takes place during the day in which Theopropides (played by A. Benet Magnuson ’06), father of Philolaches (Frederick C. Brown ’06), comes home. There are slaves to deal with the mess, but more difficult to explain is the disappearance of large amounts of money, much of which went to buy the freedom of Philematium (Claire E. Catenaccio ’07), Philolaches’ favorite prostitute.

The story really belongs to Tranio (Joseph L. DiMento ’05), a slave who has more than a reprimand to worry about if caught. Unless he can fool Theopropides into believing that the money has vanished for perfectly valid reasons, he can look forward to a crucifixion in his near future. The bulk of the play consists of his various attempts to fool Theopropides, who makes a wonderfully gullible victim until he is forced to face the truth.

The humor is broad but entertaining. Puns, misunderstandings, double entendres, deliberate anachronisms, and drunken stumblings provide most of the laughs. Many of the jokes are clearly new additions to this translation, which was done by the Classical Club specifically for this production. Most of the jokes are funny, such as the slightly bizarre simile, “like a midget at a urinal, you’re going to have to stay on your toes.” Some are less successful, such as Tranio’s incessant double entendres and a reference to the aid that Philematium’s Wellesley education gives her in her chosen profession.

Some of the updates, however, are strange enough to be fantastic—such as the wonderfully pointless dance number by the prostitutes, all of whom are slaves, set to the music of none other than “I’m A Slave 4 U,” or the characters’ use of a mishmash of phrases from the past seven or so decades.

The play requires that we cheer for Philolaches despite his bad behavior and abuse of his father’s money, and we do—largely because he is played as a consummately lovable drunk, dazedly wandering around the set and spouting pearls of pseudo-wisdom. Near the beginning, he gives a long monologue about how he went from an upright young man to a drunken partier. Besides being on a topic that may resonate for many Harvard students, the speech is delivered with the type of drunken-yet-dignified aplomb that most partiers could only wish for.

Generally, director Christopher A. Kukstis ’05 (who also makes a brief appearance at the beginning as a cranky farmer, and is a Crimson editor) juggles the antics well, allowing the characters to go off on tangents and rants but never letting us lose sight of the main thread of the plot. The tangents are usually more entertaining than the actual storyline, as is often the case in broad comedy. Tranio’s scheming is entertaining, but it is more amusing when he starts going on and on about how clever he is, or alternately how utterly screwed he is.

It is not giving much away to say that, despite the constant threat of crucifixion, everyone ends up happy, even though the misunderstandings and cons are revealed in the end. All of this resolution happens so easily that it seems that the play doesn’t end so much as it stops.

It is a pleasant ending, however, and audiences are all able to take away the very important moral: It doesn’t matter what we’ve done wrong, and as long as we are either legitimately sorry or at least do a good job of pretending to be, we will be forgiven. And if that’s not something to live by, I don’t know what is.