Walla Walla University’s drama program, wwudrama, will perform Molière’s The Misanthrope this spring on the Donnie Rigby Stage as their second show of the 2022–2023 season. 

Molière’s comic masterpiece, translated by Robert Cohen, centers on French courtier Alceste and beautiful young widow Célimène, whom Alceste hopes to marry. The two have radically different personalities, leading other characters to attempt to intervene by either bringing them together or pulling them further apart. With its fast pace, exquisite rhymes, and beautifully detailed characters, this play offers laughs and tokens of wisdom from the universal foibles of human life. 

Robert Cohen’s translation of The Misanthrope premiered at the University of California Irvine in 1997, where the script received an excellent review from the Los Angeles Times: “The highly entertaining translation brings refreshing pungency to a lunatic production…It is proof, among other things, that there is room for another equally fluent, stage-worthy version of Molière’s rhymed couplets, but one with a 1990s flavor full of colloquial yet literate pungency.” 

The production of The Misanthrope is guest-directed by WWU drama alumnus Bex Bradley. The cast includes Jewel Agulair, Joshua Ballance, Alyssa Brown, Aurora Gault, Emmalyn Logan, Macy Moon, Toby Pitton, Cameron Sandoval, Peter Thomsen, and Chandler Welty. 

Performances will be February 25 and 26, and March 2 and 4 at 7 p.m., and March 5 at 2 p.m. on the Donnie Rigby Stage (also known as the black box), located in the Canaday Technology Center at 306 S.W. Fourth Street, College Place. Tickets are available online at wallawalla.edu/drama. Admission for WWU faculty, staff, and students, and seniors is $10, and general admission is $12.

Posted Feb. 17, 2023