Greed is good

CAMBRIDGE -- For much of the first act of "The Miser," the American Repertory Theatre's production is a smart, visually intriguing, perfectly acceptable adaptation of Moliere's play.

Then Karen MacDonald bursts onto the scene and the fun really begins. The stage had been bathed in varying shades of white and the banter had been witty enough. As the matchmaker Frosine, MacDonald walks out in purple leggings, green boots, sunglasses, and a tattered black business suit. She looks at how disheveled the title character has become and -- taken aback -- yells, "Christ on a bike," in a bizarre Eastern European accent. It's as if she takes the whole production on her shoulders in this scene and raises the energy level threefold.

One of the goals of the ART over the past two years has been to introduce the audience and what's left of the acting company to new theatrical influences. The same actors working with the same directors had begun to feel a little stale by the end of Robert Brustein's tenure, particularly when it came to comedy. The marriage of the ART and Minnesota's Theatre de la Jeune Lune, despite some slow patches here and there, has to be just about everything that the two companies were hoping for. Farce hasn't been done this well at the ART in ages, although MacDonald and the two other company regulars in the play have almost always been terrific in comic parts. Remo Airaldi, looking like Tor Johnson from "Plan 9 From Outer Space," is hysterical as the abused cook and coachman Master Jacques. Will LeBow's impeccable timing gives the somewhat crooked straight man Valere such charisma that he all but steals the show from the central character. And MacDonald steals every scene she's in, with her delirious double takes and heart-of-gold earthiness.

Fortunately, Steven Epp as the miserly Harpagon has his own way with a comic turn. Looking like a cross between Alan Rickman and a demented David Strathairn (adorned by strands of a white fright wig), Epp skulks around the stage eschewing extravagance, as if every move is costing him money. The same is true of his finely honed speech. Words are measured, even squeezed out with barely any affect until someone gets his greedy dander up.

Sarah Agnew is amusing as Harpagon's daughter Elise, sort of a Georgia Engel with an overbite. The other Jeune Luners aren't as loony, although this seems to be in keeping with director Dominique Serrand's attempt at reining in the farce in favor of more humanistic and political concerns. Serrand, together with the excellent set designer Riccardo Hernandez and costume designer Sonya Berlovitz, took much of their visual inspiration from photos of Cuban mansions falling into disrepair. The plaster and paint are peeling. The white is turning dingy, a metaphor perhaps for the fading aristocracy.

Serrand, who is one of the company's five artistic directors (as is Epp), has the greed-is-good ethos of contemporary times in mind. Harpagon's penny-pinching has more than comedic consequences. Everyone in his society is sullied and more than a bit absurd.

David Ball's script is a delicious blend of the classical and the contemporary. It stays true to the spirit of Moliere without attempting a line-by-line translation, and the cast pulls it off beautifully. The way LeBow attributes the source of his Machiavellian wisdom to the ancient Greek philosopher Testicles satisfies his boss while giving the audience a good laugh. The physical comedy is equally adept -- a servant on stilts tipping the plastic used to catch drips from the ceiling for his master's bath water; loose flooring that gives the second act a funhouse feel.

Not everything works so well. The long second-act scene between Harpagon and his son Cleante is a snooze and a momentum breaker, as are some of the pre-MacDonald scenes in the first act. Harpagon and Cleante both want to marry Mariane, whose wild-and-crazy style of torturing the language can get too obscure to be effective. Ending the play with a crumbling or imploding house is getting to be as much a cliche for the ART as it was for the Vincent Price-Edgar Allan Poe movies.

Overall, though, ART and Theatre de la Jeune Leune complement each other with such grace and wit that it's churlish to be miserly with one's praise. If there are more playmates like them for ART, bring them on.

Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com.

The Miser
Play by Moliere. Adapted by David Ball.
Directed by: Dominique Serrand. Set, Riccardo Hernandez. Lights, Marcus Dillard. Costumes, Sonya Berlovitz. Sound, David Remedios. Presented by the American Repertory Theatre in association with Theatre de la Jeune Lune.
At: the Loeb Drama Center, through July 18. 617-547-8300.