About the show
There’s no better racket than the religion racket and no one knows that racket like Tartuffe. Almost everyone can see what a sanctimonious hypocrite he is, but that doesn’t matter. He only needs a couple of rich and influential suckers who will fall for his holier-than-thou routine and, in old Madame Pernelle and her foolish son Orgon, he’s found them. String them along for long enough and they’ll give him anything he wants: money, power, even the hand of Orgon’s daughter in marriage.
Every time it’s revived, Molière’s 1664 play Tartuffe strikes audiences with its contemporary relevance, probably because the religious hucksterism and bigotry it satirises is always with us. This is Molière at his most diabolically funny.
Credits
