STAGE REVIEW : A Tasty Double Dip of Classics

If you’re going to sin, sin big. If you’re going to risk, ditto. It’s all one in theend and the ride can be so much more exciting.

A Noise Within’s fondness for transgression is largely confined to the plays it chooses to do--the Classics, with a capital C--but its taste for risk is another matter.

This Glendale-based company is launching into an ambitious third repertory season with its usual minimal sets and good costumes, and a vigorous attack on sin. “Coriolanus,” “Tartuffe” and “The Duchess of Malfi” are the transgressors du jour . The first two are already tucked into the repertoire. The third arrives Nov. 14.

Choosing between hubris and hypocrisy is not easy, but since “Tartuffe” is shorter and keeps us laughing, hypocrisy has the winning edge. Moliere’s 1669 lampoon of religious dissemblers and the fools who believe them is given a knockabout in-period staging, after first threatening to mince right off the track with a needlessly coy opening scene. It soon rights itself, however, and grows progressively stronger as the comedy unfolds.

In sharp contrast to the bewigged, beruffled, bon-vivant family into whose bosom he has bored, Joel Swetow’s unctuous Tartuffe is lean, mean and surreptitiously amusing as he strikes vaguely crucifixional poses, wanly waves his cat-o’-nine-tails at the air, and is followed around by a shuffling Igor-like servant, Laurent (Steve Weingartner).

Director Art Manke has fun exposing this zealot whose calls for penance and humility may have been eagerly received by the bumbling head of this household (Mitchell Edmonds’ sonorous Orgon), but fool no one else.

It helps that Manke’s using Richard Wilbur’s resilient, rhymed-couplet translation, and the pivotal scene in which Orgon’s wife Elmire (Anna Miller) invites seduction by the enemy the better to entrap him is ingeniously comic.

But a lot of the production’s strength lies in less expected places: Jill Hill’s nearly speechless Mariane, caught between her father’s wishes and her own amorous inclinations, and Manke himself as her wounded suitor, Valere. The finest scene comes when Jenna Cole’s unflappable Dorine referees a lovers’ quarrel between them.

Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” staged in modern dress and governed by Geoff Elliott’s towering performance in the title role, suffers chiefly from director John Noah Hertzler’s overemphasis on the Oedipal aspects of the plot.

More than once, June Claman as his mother, Volumnia, is called on to touch him, kiss him on the lips and otherwise exhibit an obsessive attachment that Elliott must reciprocate. Volumnia’s dismissive neglect of Coriolanus’ wife, Virgilia, is equally ill-advised, although Emily Heebner in the role seizes the occasion to turn out some extremely fine reactive acting.

Deborah Strang and Steve Weingartner are solid as the questioning tribunes as are Roger Michelson’s Cominius and David Drummond’s Tullus Aufidius. The Volscians’welcome for Coriolanus and some of the rabble scenes in Rome display plenty of well-orchestrated zest and energy.

But beyond the drinking of espresso and a Volumnia who may have taken her sartorial cue from Nancy Reagan, the updated setting is more a budgetary than artistic advantage. It does make for one striking moment: This Coriolanus is not cut down at the end but mowed down in a volley of gunshots.

It’s a blazing climax, that Hertzler underscores with impressive aural trappings. But it comes after his Oedipal choices have unbalanced the play, reducing tragedy to family melodrama, especially since Claman’s forcefulness is not consistent and since Jack L. Harrell never really locates the production’s pulse as Menenius.

Still it’s a tasty, largely satisfying double-header, soon to become a triple. Better for a company to grasp just beyond its reach. Isn’t that what risk is? And now for that “Duchess of Malfi” . . . . .

* “Coriolanus” and “Tartuffe,” Glendale Masonic Temple, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale. “Coriolanus” plays Thursday, Saturday, 8 p.m.; also Nov. 6, 8, 19, 8 p.m.; Nov. 21, 28, 9 p.m.; Nov. 29, 2 p.m.; Dec. 4, 8 p.m.; Dec. 6, 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 6. Running time: 2 hours, 55 minutes. “Tartuffe” plays Friday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; also Nov. 5, 7, 8 p.m.; Nov. 21, 4 p.m.; Nov. 22, 7 p.m.; Nov. 27, 8 p.m.; Dec. 5, 4 p.m.; Dec. 6, 2 p.m.; Dec. 11, 8 p.m.; Dec. 12, 9 p.m.; Dec. 13, 7 p.m.; Dec. 17, 8 p.m.; Dec. 19, 4 p.m. Ends Dec. 19 . $14; (818) 753-7750. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes. ‘Coriolanus’

Geoff Elliott: Caius Martius (Coriolanus)

June Claman: Volumnia

Emily Heebner: Virgilia

David Diano Young: Martius

Brigitt Markusfeld: Valeria

Jack L. Harrell: Menenius Agrippa

David Drummond: Tullus Aufidius

Nicholas Rempel: Titus Lartius

Roger Michelson: Cominius

Deborah Strang: Sicinius Velutus, a tribune

Steve Weingartner: Junius Brutus, a tribune

Shakespeare’s tragedy. Director/Sound designer John Noah Hertzler. Sets Jodi Ginnever. Lights David M. Darwin. Costumes Terri Holt. Choral director Nike Doukas. Choreographer Stephanie Shroyer. Fight Choreographer Kenneth R. Merckx Jr. Stage manager Traci W. Hainsworth.

‘Tartuffe’

Channing Chase: Mme. Pernelle

Mitchell Edmonds: Orgon

Anna Miller: Elmire

Donald Sage Mackay: Damis

Jill Hill: Mariane

Art Manke: Valere

Neil Vipond: Cleante

Joel Swetow: Tartuffe

Steve Weingartner: Laurent

Jenna Cole: Dorine

John Sefton: Monsieur Loyal

David Drummond: An Officer

Tawny Hamilton: Flipote

Moliere’s comedy. Director Art Manke. Sets Jodi Ginnever. Lights David M. Darwin. Costumes Susan Doepner. Wigs Sugano. Composer Kem Hauge. Dramaturge Teresa Choate. Stage manager Barry Dorf.