‘Heir Apparent’ at Aurora a crude but clever adaptation
Within the first minute or two of “The Heir Apparent” at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre, there’s a sex joke and a scatological laugh line.
Freely translated and adapted by David Ives — he refers to his work as “transladaptation” — Jean-François Regnard’s 1708 comedy “Le Légataire universel” has become a crude but clever sitcom on a theme of “greed is gross.”
Ives pays tribute to Regnard, who is something of a runner-up to Molière’s reigning champion of French satire and hilarity, by keeping the play in rhymed verse.
The Aurora’s “Heir,” which opened on Thursday, April 21, is the latest in what appears to be a long victory lap for Ives’ version of the play, which was created in 2011 for the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C., and has been adored wherever it has been produced.
Director Josh Costello’s production has plenty of bounce thanks to an adept cast headed by Julian López-Morillas as Geronte, the miserly misanthrope teetering on the brink of death, or at least everyone in his household hopes he is because they can’t wait to get their hands on his millions.
Eraste’s efforts to weasel his way into his ailing uncle’s will are abetted by servants Lisette (a rapturously droll Katie Rubin) and Crispin (Patrick Kelly Jones), who takes his duties seriously enough to effectively imitate Geronte’s far-flung relative from New York, his pig-farming niece from the countryside and, in a state of true desperation, old Geronte himself.
Forget the satire, forget the rhymed verse (which is actually funny more often than it’s not) — when Kelly is going full steam, he’s a comedy marvel, and his impressions stand out as great little sketches within the play.
“The Heir Apparent” is a well-produced bauble, pure fun all the way to its ending, which lands squarely in the lap of another great comedy, this one a 20th-century classic, when everyone on stage embraces love over money, realizing at last, that you can’t take it with you.