Colin hanlon mindy sterling

David Ives’s The School for Lies is a freight train of funny rolling through the Classic Stage Company. Some laughs come thundering through at higher speeds than others, yet in this adaptation of Moliere’s classic The Misanthrope, regardless of the speed, the company always finds the funny, making for a wonderfully fun night of theatre.

In The School for Lies, playwright Ives has taken a few liberties with the exact plot of The Misanthrope, but it is, no offense to Moliere, for the better. In production notes, Ives says that while he likes The Misanthrope, he has always felt it started in the middle, and Ives was more interested in how The Misanthrope’s central lovers, Alceste and Celimene, came together, being, as they are, such opposites. So Ives changes a few things around, killing off Alceste and introducing Frank (Hamish Linklater), who is just that, and devises a way for Frank and Celimene (Mamie Gummer) to fall in love, thanks to a little trick