For love or money The Miser, in the round and open air BY MEGAN GRUMBLING
	The Miser By Molière | Directed by Lisa DiFranza | Produced by the Stage at Spring Point, at Fort Preble’s Battery Rivaldi | through July 30 | 207.828.0128

In Lisa DiFranza’s production of The Miser (the third annual outdoor production of the Stage at Spring Point), its title skinflint is disconnected from his household not just by his lucre-loving ethos, but by several centuries worth of fashion. While rich old Harpagon (Mark Honan) hobbles around the stage in full period dress, his children Elise and Cléante (Michelle Lee and David Bass-Clark) bop, swoon, and scheme around in duds that are high Mod. The anachronism is a playful, rather willfully clever take on the comedy’s classical abutment of new order against old: Both of the kids are in love — with people, not with money — and out-of-touch Harpagon understands this even less than he does go-go boots or hip-huggers.

Marriage for love is so out of the question that Cléante has been seeing his lady, the penniless Mariane (Ariel Francoeur), on the sly, and Elise has actually posed her lover, Valere (Keith Anctil), in the household as a pandering servant. Just as brother and sister resolve to finally spill the beans, Harpagon comes out with some matrimonial intentions of his own, and Cléante suddenly has on his hands not just a stubborn parent, but a rival. The resulting antics make up an energetic, colorful, and extremely entertaining production that is also just a walk from Willard Beach, performed under the stars, and absolutely free.

As in the previous two years, the Stage at Spring Point has built their site-specific set directly into one of the battery mounts at Fort Preble. This year’s location features a wide circle of a platform, which designer Patrick Dullea incorporates as a theater-in-the-round, with seating risers set up right on the platform. The set makes a multi-purpose room of Harpagon’s house, with tall frames of slender windows upstage against the wall of the battery, and marblesque tiles of black and white over the round. The production also makes use of an upper level behind the windows, which represents the garden where the old man’s trove is hidden.

True to the balanced spirit of the Enlightenment, DiFranza’s blocking emphasizes pairings, the shifts and conflicts between alliances in the struggle toward an ultimately symmetrical conclusion. In doing so, she’s mindful of the round, and much of the movement on stage consists of characters crossing the stage in arcs, following the curve of the platform. Sometimes this works to great effect. One well-composed scene has Harpagon, Valere, and rival servant Jacques (a fine, surly turn by the excellent Peter Brown) rotating in configurations of two-on-one, as each servant manages to redirect the master’s wrath back on the other. There are several similarly well-blocked scenes, in which the motion serves to dramatize the narrative action, but often the around-and-back crossings seem rather arbitrary, and sometimes distract from the actors’ delivery.

Once again, the Stage has secured a fine band of actors. As Harpagon, Honan does this quintessential comic antagonist wondrous justice with his slapstick physicality and shrewd facial change-ups. This miser is a miserable delight to behold as he schemes against his kids, laps up the flattery of Valere and the sly matchmaker Frosine (earth mother-cum-Creole madam Monique Raymond), and lunges at servants with his cane. Honan wields a comic style and skill as classic as his costume.

The rest of the cast, of course, departs from sartorial classicism (with the exception of Jacques), and DiFranza makes a mild attempt to correspond its acting to its garb. Bass-Clark, in blue bell-bottoms, flowery shirt, and a medallion on a chain, does a particularly good job in giving Cléante’s swoonings and protests the lilt of a later, groovier age. Spike McCue, too, as the con-artist servant La Fleche (styled up in full-on, later-’60s hippie fringe) has a good time translating his delivery into recognizably ’60s-ish cadences. And Anctil’s Valere, dressed as more of a square in blue polyester and a sweater, simpers shamelessly to Harpagon in tones that might recall one of the goody-goodies you’d like to slap from the old sitcoms. But that’s about as far as the ’60s motif goes, acting-wise, and though its fab styles are great fun to look at, you might sometimes wish DiFranza had pushed the gimmick a little further for her characters.

That said, the visual spectacle is a hoot, as is the liberal use of music — early Beatles and Stones, the inimitable "Mais Non Mais Non" — and the cast regularly pauses in the action to up and do, for instance, the Swim. As far as the play’s generational schism goes, one does wonder why DiFranza chose the mid-’60s for the reference point, rather than a few years later, when the rift was more acute and much more fraught. Then again, such a change might rob this Miser of its bounce and brightness, which are substantial and perfect for summer. Bring your ice cream cones and cold Cokes over to South Portland for a picnic, and the Stage’s Miser will match them for cheer and effervescence.

Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com