Performed: Spring 2011
Director: Simona Giurgea
L’Hereux Stratageme, a brisk, sophisticated comedy written in 1733 by Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux and brilliantly translated as Successful Strategies by Timberlake Wertenbaker, depicts a world of social immobility. Servants and masters alike, animated by ardent and urgent desires, chase love where they see it. Speaking Marivaux’ demonstratively artificial language—encumbered as it is by deception and self-delusion—the Commedia-dell’Arte inspired characters run around in circles, buzzing with energy, going nowhere until reality catches up with them. Colgate’s production of this frenetic comedy explored resonances between the social life of eighteenth-century France and the etiquette of today’s online culture.