The Triumph of Love

Play (1732)
by Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
Adapted by Stephen Wadsworth (1992)
Based on a translation by Stephen Wadsworth and Nadia Benabid
Directed by Loretta Greco
Huntington Theatre Company
Huntington Avenue Theatre
Symphony Hall area, Boston
March 7 – April 6, 2025

With Allison Altman (Léonide), Avanthika Srinivasan (Corine), Vincent Randazzo (Harlequin), Patrick Kerr (Dimas), Rob Kellogg (Agis), Marianna Bassham (Léontine), Nael Nacer (Hermocrate)

Léonide (Allison Altman) is in love with Agis (Rob Kellogg) although it’s from a distance. She is the unqualified heir to a throne that has essentially been stolen from Agis by Léonide’s family. Consequently, Agis hates the unseen Léonide.

Nonetheless, Léonide, who is noble-hearted, seeks not only to make amends and to restore Agis to his throne, but truly loves him and wants to join him in marriage. But Agis is currently under the spell of Hermocrate (Nael Nacer), a philosopher of sorts, and his sister Léontine (Marianna Bassham), a stodgy and emotionally closed-down pair who guard him closely and, in his presumed interests, also hold Léonide in great contempt.

Appearing on the scene with her lady-in-waiting, Corine (Avanthika Srinivasan), Léonide and Corine dress in male garb and take on men’s identities – Léonide as Phocion – in order to disguise themselves around Hermocrate, Léontine and Agis. But Harlequin (Vincent Randazzo) and the old gardener Dimas (Patrick Kerr) catch on to the cross-dressing pretty quickly, so the cat gets partially out of the bag with them right away.

In order to inveigle herself into the lives of Hermocrate, Léontine and Agis, Léonide comes up with a ruse to try to seduce both Hermocrate and Leontine into love affairs and theoretically into subsequent marriage, while trying earnestly and honestly to become romantically entangled with Agis. After Léonide reveals that she is a woman to Hermocrate and to Agis, she pretends to be someone name Aspasie and begins to try to seduce Hermocrate as a woman while still trying to seduce Léontine as a man. (It is a farce, after all.) Both Léontine and Hermocrate fall for Léonide’s ruse, which opens up the passionate floodgates on both members of this emotionally limited pair. Agis also falls for Léonide as Aspasie, until Léonide finally reveals that she is indeed the hated Léonide, which causes some understandable concern among Agis and the elders until the all’s well that ends well ending arrives.

The knotted plot of this not at all plausible but ultimately affecting farce plays pretty well, especially during its second half when the various implausible vectors come into conflict with one another. The setup in the first half is a little slow going, but there, as well, there are some funny moments.

This play is blessed with some great actors and some great moments. Nael Nacer and Marianna Bassham, long-standing icons of the Boston stage and both extremely versatile actors, hold down the bases as the two stalwart siblings and it’s great to see them in this explicitly buffo endeavor. They are great in whatever they do, and they rise to the silliest, but emotionally and interestingly convoluted, of occasions here.

As Léonide, Allison Altman offers a great deal of energy and passion with good returns, particularly in the second half. She is the focal point of the show and carries it well. As the old gardener Dimas, Patrick Kerr has some very funny moments, as does Vincent Randazzo as Harlequin. As Corine, Avanthika Srinivasan holds down the sidekick role earnestly.

Perhaps it is a vulnerability in the original play, but the explanation for Léonide’s ruse to try to seduce Hermocrate and Léontine does not make too much sense. Léonide’s noble intention to get close to Agis figures well, but the associated explanation of the romantic manipulation of the two elder siblings as necessary to do that does not quite square. Of course, this is a farce, so one doesn’t expect it to cohere logically, but in a play about love one expects some degree of authenticity from an heroic protagonist like Léonide. The final moral argument that her manipulations open the two elders up emotionally in an unexpected way is a shallow consequentialist one, which does not quite wash, and which well may have put off the original audience of the play. One of the recipients of that manipulative treatment is Hermocrate, a philosopher, and one might have found some greater amusement in hearing his moral refutation of this dubious strategy employed by Léonide. In any event, a lot gets swept under the rug in a farce.

This intentionally spoofy outing made me smile occasionally, though I didn’t laugh too much. There were indeed a good number of the audience who were in a constant state of enthused hysteria. I did find, on another note, that when the end of the play came that the fruition of the complicated antics, however morally dubious, was unexpectedly moving.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)