The comic space around Argan’s chair

From the mask to the chair

Roundabout’s The Imaginary Invalid at the Todd Haimes Theatre brings Argan on through a mask. Bill Irwin has adapted the play and takes the lead; Brandon J. Dirden directs. In the opening Joey Sims describes, Irwin summons the scenery and the other performers pull red streamers from his body like intestines. A patient’s imagined command over his body becomes a piece of stage business involving the company. I read that opening as a strong opportunity to distribute the play’s comic movement across its performers.^[1]

Sims describes a more stationary arrangement afterwards: Argan largely sits and reacts to those around him. The critic explicitly expected more from Irwin’s physical comedy. That expectation helps locate the judgment. A seated Argan after such an active opening could make the household’s inertia under his obsession visible. It could also confine the lead to a reactive centre if the exchanges around him change too little. The latter is my inference; stillness as a deliberate character choice remains a plausible alternative.^[1]

My interest therefore falls on the circulation of speech and movement around the chair. Sims finds Rachel Bloom’s wry asides as Toinette effective but considers her bond with Argan subdued. Those judgments belong together. Individually funny lines do not automatically build a relationship in which each encounter changes the performers’ positions. My measure would be who can decide what happens after an exchange: does Argan’s demand direct Toinette, or does her answer shift the order he has imposed?^[1]

Action changing hands

The young lovers whom the review finds livelier offer a comparison within the same production. In Sims’s assessment, Daniel Croix Henderson’s Cleante and Ava Lalezarzadeh’s Angelique carry more comic energy. I would not extend that into a definitive judgment on the entire performance’s pace. Still, the different response to their relationship and to Argan and Toinette points towards a more concrete question than how much the leading actor moves: what does each performer demand of the other, and how far can that demand change the encounter?^[1]

The supporting performances belong to that distribution too. Sims discusses Brooks Ashmanskas’s flamboyant comedy, Crystal A. Dickinson’s calculating Beline and Hiram Delgado’s Thomas. Reading them only as separate turns surrounding the star would diminish the ensemble’s possibilities. In a company comedy, an entrance gains force when it puts pressure on what the central character can do next. That dramaturgical measure asks how separate comic turns connect to the flow of a shared scene.^[1]

The opening’s red streamers make a useful starting point: one performer’s body depends on the others’ actions. I would look for The Imaginary Invalid’s theatrical strength in that mutual dependence. Argan can remain seated; the chair can still generate action if every arrival renegotiates his small authority. Sims’s review suggests that such exchange works better between the young lovers. The dramaturgical question follows: can the action distributed across the company at the opening circulate strongly enough afterwards to alter the leading character’s habits?^[1]