The Department of Theatre opens its season with “The Liar,” a comedy-of-errors translated to fit the modern age. The play is full of laughs from secrets, misunderstandings and mistaken identities.
The play is about Dorante, a young man who convinces his father to move to Paris so he may seek adventure. He soon finds an adventure as he falls in love with a beautiful young woman, but accidentally mistakes her for her cousin.
All the while, it seems as if no one is able to speak the truth to one another. Dorante is played by second-year MFA student Drew Davidson.
“It’s all about the importance of truth and love,” said Elizabeth McCoy, a senior BFA student. McCoy plays Clarice, the woman Dorante thinks he has fallen in love with. Clarice is also secretly engaged to Alcippe, played by senior BFA student Terrance Fleming, which adds to even more hilarity when Dorante enters the picture.
Probably one of the most interesting characters in the play is Cliton, played by third-year MFA student Michael Morrison. Cliton, unlike the characters surrounding him, cannot lie.
“It is something of his tragic flaw because he has been fired from many jobs before for telling the truth,” Morrison said. “He is drawn to the truth and almost can’t help but say it.”
“Even when he does try to lie, he just ends up making everything worse in the end,” McCoy said.
Even though Pierre Corneille wrote the play in iambic pentameter, audiences should not have any trouble understanding it thanks to the adaptation by David Ives. Iambic pentameter describes the rhythm the words form in the line, meaning the words are meant to be said in a particular fashion. Shakespeare is one of the most well-known writers to utilize iambic pentameter.
“David Ives still makes it very modern,” Davidson said. “There are rhyming couplets and it’s sort of fun listening to the rhythm of the words. He almost sort of pokes fun at iambic pentameter.”
The play opens in the Martha Tatum Theatre on Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m. with subsequent showings on Oct. 3, 4, 9-11, all at 7:30 p.m. as well. The Oct. 12 show begins at 2 p.m.
