A new distillation of Molière’s The Misanthrope
By Matt Minnicino
Directed by Megan Behm
May 30 to June 30, 2019
Gunston Arts Center Theatre Two
Opening night: Tuesday, June 4, 2019, 7:30 pm.
A Misanthrope is a brisk, biting comedy about a cynic who thinks insincerity is a sin—but the joke’s on him when he falls for an ingenue who’s more than his match. Minnicino’s A Misanthrope distills Molière’s best-known farce into quippy rhyming couplets, cutting to the heart of a society of flattery with a hot take on the absurdity of modern hot airs. Hypocrisy has never been more hilarious. If we got tweets from 17th-century France, they would sound something like this.
Matt Minnicino is a playwright, actor, teacher, and incorrigible tale-teller based in Manhattan. Along with Molière, he has adapted Chekhov (three times), Strindberg, Ibsen, Gorky, Genet, Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Homer, The Book of Genesis, poems by Rilke, art by Magritte, and more. He is an alumnus of Pipeline Theatre’s PlayLab, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, and SPACE on Ryder Farm and is the winner of the Arts & Letters Prize. MFA: Columbia.
Megan Behm (Director) is delighted to be making her Avant Bard debut! Previous directing credits include To Tell My Story (Helen Hayes Nomination, Best Original Adaptation) and Switch (The Welders), 45 Plays for 45 Presidents (NextStop Theatre), Cymbeline (Virginia Shakespeare Festival), Safe as Houses (Pinky Swear Productions), The Comedy of Errors (Lean & Hungry Theater), The Campsite Rule (The Washington Rogues), Minus You and Edward Cullen Ruined My Mother’s Love Life (The Source Festival), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and According to Shakespeare (InterAct Story Theatre). Training: College of William & Mary, LAMDA, Studio Theater Conservatory. www.megan-behm.
