The Conspirators’ “Tartuffe, or, The Charlatan,” with Henry DelBello and Deacon Leer/Photo: Logan and Candice Conner, Oomphotography
This past weekend, I had the privilege to see Chicago-based theater and performance collective The Conspirators perform a two-hour rendition of Molière’s satire “Tartuffe” in a style which is unique to current ranks on the city’s stages: The Style. A “neo-commedia” method of acting which combines mime-ish facepaint, frequent confrontation with the audience and musical accompaniment of each movement (think a slide whistle being pulled as a character hauls up a pair of pants), it is a manner which, in many ways, evades all-encompassing description. Even the multi-paragraph attempt given on the collective’s website fails to do so wholly.
“Tartuffe” is the second performance I have attended by The Conspirators and, therefore, the second time I have witnessed them employ The Style. My first experience with it was during the collective’s staging of the Marx Brothers film “Duck Soup!” in October 2025. The Style, though surprising upon the curtain drop—as it always should be for a first-time viewer—worked remarkably well for that performance. Its face paint and unnatural movement meshed with the slapstick, punchline-heavy dialogue innate to the Marx Brothers script. The Conspirators operate in a state of near perpetual comedy, where any scene, however serious, can elicit laughter. A comedy without the guise of drama suited them well.
“Tartuffe” is a more difficult medium for The Style. The play is certainly a comedy—in its encyclopedic definition if nothing else—but, unless the translation is a particularly audacious strain of modern, it reads as a wholly different sort of play than “Duck Soup!” Its comedy is veiled, buried in metaphor, translated and requires at least a surface-level understanding of the socio-economic dynamics of pre-revolution France. As a result, The Conspirators’ rendition exhibits just how precarious the successes of The Style (of which there are many) can be. How, in order for the laughter it seeks to reach its full potential, a delicate crescendo of source material, performance, cultural reference and movement is necessary.
Much of what allowed “Duck Soup!” to succeed is absent from “Tartuffe.” Where the comedy often seemed effortless in “Duck Soup!,” the neo-comedic style meshing effortlessly with dialogue born of that same type, the two seem at odds on “Tartuffe.” The dialogue is stilted, archaic and dependent on rhyme—in other words, not naturally funny—so the comedy must come from elsewhere: the movement of each actor, the dress of the cast and the sound effects. Such things were present in “Duck Soup!” as well, but served to augment the comedic nature of the dialogue. In “Tartuffe,” the non-spoken aspects of the play constitute the comedy. Indeed, if the cast were not dressed in goth graphic tees and screaming lines that might otherwise be whispered, it would often be difficult to tell whether the play were a comedy at all.
The Conspirators’ “Tartuffe, or, The Charlatan,” with Jacob Dorris, Riley Marie Fortin and Anthony Raúl Soto/Photo: Logan and Candice Conner, Oomphotography
Furthermore, much of “Duck Soup!”’s resonance laid in its direct analogue to modern events. The play chronicles a dictator in a country which is the United States in everything but name, dragging his country into a war for no reason other than his own pride (and stupidity). The line from its fictional presidency to our own is not a difficult one for the audience to follow, so the tongue-in-cheek jokes which hint at it are well-met.
The promotional poster for “Tartuffe” suggests its desire to engage in a similar mode of satire. Low-resolution images of Trump administration adherents (e.g. Robert F. Kennedy, Charlie Kirk, Alex Jones) backlight the play’s title. “Tartuffe,” however, is not a play concerned with politics. It follows a holy man’s attempts to use piety for financial and romantic gain. There is not a clear duplicate in modern politics. The collective’s desire is for the audience to compare it to the use of religious language in notably secular modern politics, but it is a longer bridge to cross and, therefore, does not benefit from the situational comedy which “Duck Soup!” enjoyed.
The performances in “Tartuffe” are as impressive as those in “Duck Soup!” The Style requires an energetic, athletic style of acting which the cast rises to meet—drenched in sweat, even with a well air-conditioned theater. But the canvas with which the actors work is one much more difficult to succeed upon, and with a method as difficult as The Style, such an absence is felt.
It is a difficult method of acting to perform and a difficult style to find a suitable medium for. An original script, adapted from nothing modern or premodern, would best suit such a unique, engrossing style (or a script which is unapologetically a comedy), so the physical intensity of The Style can complement rather than replace it.
The Conspirators’ “Tartuffe, or, The Charlatan” is on stage at Stars & Garters, 3914 North Clark, through June 7. Tickets available here.
