“In a eminently playable, witty adaptation by Tony Kushner, THE
ILLUSION comes across as downright entertaining, not an adjective anyone who
reads Corneille in college is likely to expect.
Unlike his better known plays, which have heroic subjects, THE
ILLUSION is concerned with domestic matters the alienation of parents from
children, marital infidelity. While it is serious about these subjects, it puts
them in an unusual context: A father has consulted a magician about his
estranged son, and the magician shows him scenes from his son's life....
The comedy is elegant, full of depth...”
Howard Kissel, Daily News
“What are the real powers of sorcery? To alter? To define? To
transport? Tony Kushner and Pierre Corneille before him go for all three, which
is only part of the magic in Kushner's fanciful adaptation of Corneille's
L'ILLUSION COMIQUE.
Freely adapted it is, in the best sense. For Corneille, whose
later, loftier verse plays earned him the stodgy title of Father of French
Tragedy, THE ILLUSION was a mildly satirical precursor to all that a glitch,
written when he was only twenty-nine. Yet even then, it was burdened by a
ponderous Seventeenth-Century neo-classical style that kept the word comique out of
Twentieth-Century range. Kushner's achievement is digging under all the
circumlocution to salvage an ageless and universal tale, stripping the nugget of
its ornamentation and serving it up to us lingually lucid and lean.
…this the tale of a rigid father, Pridament, who, stricken with
remorse for having provoked his son to flee the family home, searches out the
magician Aleandre in the hope that he will help him find out what happened to
the wayward boy.
Aleandre does, and the ironic twist of the piece is that after
several false starts, passionate re-enactments, comic delusions and confusions,
the truth is revealed and Papa finds he doesn't like it. The light-hearted
ending is a cynical but honest lesson in selective affection.
All the fun, however, is in getting there. THE ILLUSION takes us
into territory on which theater thrives: fantasy, witchcraft, transcended place
and time....”
Sylvie Drake, Los Angeles Times
“What a fascinating, totally theatrical excursion we're in for in
this Seventeenth Century fairytale-fable first spun by French classical dramatist
Pierre Corneille. In 1639, L'ILLUSION COMIQUE was a comedy they didn't know what
to make of; Twentieth Century playwright Tony Kushner knows what to make of it.
Triumphantly exhumed and enlivened three and a half centuries later in Kushner's
fresh, free adaptation; it proves indeed to be...`a prematurely modern play'.
Both modern and ancient, timeless and timely, flippant and profound... It is a
thorough delight....
L'ILLUSION COMIQUE was a masterpiece waiting for its time to
happen. Tony Kushner made it happen and made it better. It is essence of
theater, essence of archetypal magic. Carl Jung would have loved it.”
Polly Warfield, Drama-Logue
originally produced by New York Theater Workshop
6 M, 2 F
I S B N: 0-88145-231-9, $8.95
also available in PLAYS BY TONY KUSHNER