The Heir Apparent

Among the farceurs of Renaissance-era France, few loom larger than Molière. Ask era experts about Jean-François Regnard and you're apt to get a blank look. But the fellow whom history relegated to footnote status is having a moment in the sun, thanks to David Ives' clever adaptation of Regnard's The Heir Apparent.

With a two-hour barrage of rhyming couplets, Ives gives a cheeky, profane and contemporary spin to Regnard's tale of love and money. Directed by John Rando, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater production features opulent production values, Three Stooges-worthy levels of slapstick, copious fart jokes, and countless, crass double entendres. The tone is often shrill, the humor unabashedly puerile. Decidedly, the show isn't for everyone. But the energy onstage is off-the-charts, and the cast commits to the silliness with wholehearted gusto.

It's tough to overstate the role of flatulence and other bodily emissions in Ives' adaptation. The story opens as a ridiculously ornate grandfather clock tolls the hour with a wind-breaking sound effect that makes the infamous campfire scene of Blazing Saddles look like high tea at Buckingham Palace.

The plot is as silly as the sound effects. We're in Paris in 1708 where Eraste (Nate Burger) wishes to marry Isabelle (Emily Peterson). Isabelle's gorgon of a mother Madame Argante (Linda Kimbrough) won't allow the nuptials to happen unless Eraste's grotty old Uncle Geronte (Paxton Whitehead) names his nephew as his sole heir. Geronte intends to marry Isabelle himself. Isabelle is horrified at the thought of bedding a skeevy sack of sickly bones who accompanies his every word with a grotesque symphony of bodily noises emanating from just about every orifice available. Fortunately, wily servants Lisette (Jessie Fisher) and Crispin (Cliff Saunders) have enough smarts to set a winning scheme in motion. Complications and turmoil ensue, especially when with the arrival of Scruple (Patrick Kerr), a very tiny attorney who opens doors for all manner of gags about dwarfs and shortcomings.

For anyone who gets headachy when confronted with streams of manically delivered puns, and frantic physical high jinks, The Heir Apparent will become tiresome in short order. But if you can embrace the childish glee embedded in Ives' adaptation, you'll find plenty to celebrate. The ensemble flings itself through the plot with a momentum that's tough to resist.

As Geronte, Whitehead is gloriously disgusting, spewing mucus and lechery with uncompromising abandon. Like the rest of the ensemble, he turns in an intensely physical performance that requires the stamina of an athlete. As the diminutive Scruple, Kerr scuttles about on his knees, blustering with beet-faced indignation at the never-ending jokes about stature. Fisher is the most relatable of the group as a lusty servant with more smarts than the rest of the household combined. And as the indomitable Madame Argante, Kimbrough is a full-steam-ahead battleship of a woman – grossly intimidating and constitutionally unable to change course once without a sea change in the world around her.

Set designer Kevin Depinet's preposterously ornate French salon evokes images of Versailles on acid and aptly illustrates a world filled with foolishness. David Woolard's costumes explode with elaborate flounces and ruffles in a cartoonish send-up of upper-class excess.

Technically, Rando creates a production that's a virtuosic merger of clever language and exhaustive physicality. If death is easy and comedy is difficult, lightning-paced farce is next to impossible. It's a tribute to the talent onstage that the Chicago Shakes cast makes it look effortless.