A Sparkling ‘Imaginary Invalid,’ With Bill Irwin, Is the Cure for What Ails You

- The Imaginary Invalid

- NYT Critic’s Pick

When Molière’s “Le Malade imaginaire” was first performed in Paris in 1673, the play was also partly a ballet. Lively intermèdes abounded: Between all the actors’ sly scenes about untrustworthy doctors and unnecessary enemas, dancers would spring merrily about.

Now Bill Irwin’s ballet-free adaptation, “The Imaginary Invalid,” directed by Brandon J. Dirden for the Roundabout Theater Company on Broadway, produces the same sensation as those long-ago divertissements — grace, lightness, symmetry. “The Imaginary Invalid” is about silliness in expertise; “The Imaginary Invalid” is about expertise in silliness. Surfaces in Molière can be deceptive; deceptions in Molière can be of service.

In a featureless void, Irwin appears, wearing a long nightgown and a commedia dell’arte mask. He knocks the floor three times with a ceremonial staff, which “wakes” the show. When capering dottore clowns in academic gowns spill into the non-space, it disappears: The inky fabric floor slithers away, three forced-perspective verdigris walls glide in, and a white plasterwork ceiling drops from above. As this pretty, chocolate-box parlor assembles itself magically around him, Irwin takes his place in a big leather chair.

Voilà! He is Argan, the titular hypochondriac! He is also the rabbit in the hat.

This superb wordless sequence — the set designer is Beowulf Boritt; the movement director is Lorenzo Pisoni — reassures us that a show about a guy in a chair will move like a hummingbird. And once it’s spoken, Molière’s language (via Irwin, who uses Doug Skinner’s translation) does have a bird’s frantic, quick-beat tremolo. The rubber-faced, telescope-necked, precision-pratfaller Irwin may well be our greatest living clown. (I don’t want to jinx him by saying that he’s definitively No. 1, in case other clowns try to bump him off.)

Argan’s chair, where he demands that his household and his doctors all attend him, is a kind of Grand Siècle Barcalounger. He’s constantly getting tangled in its mechanical pop-up footrest; his maid, Toinette (Rachel Bloom, surprisingly unshowy here), must unstick him. He does frequently try to pop out of it: His quack doctors, Dr. Purgon (the brilliant Brooks Ashmanskas) and Dr. Diafoirus (Ashmanskas in a different hat), have prescribed twice-a-day colonics, so our dyspeptic hero is often, shall we say, on the go.

The message of the tart comedy, written by Molière right at the end of his life, is: “For what ails us all, there is no cure.” But there are pleasures, which may be almost as good. Argan’s sweet daughter Angelique (Ava Lalezarzadeh, the sparkling delight from last season’s “English”) hopes to pursue some of her own pleasures with her suitor Cleante (Daniel Croix Henderson).