He’s Old, Rich and Dying, and Wants His Nephew’s Girl | ‘The Heir Apparent,’ by Way of David Ives
Charles IsherwoodApril 9, 2014: “This place is fun! A wondrous mess! I wish my every day knew such excess!” Thus exults a sour (and very tiny) lawyer in "The Heir Apparent", David Ives’s adaptation of a little-known 18th-century French comedy by Jean-François Regnard that opened on Wednesday at the Classic Stage Company. Given that this fellow, played with simpering style by David Pittu, has been hoodwinked, humiliated, repeatedly mocked for his diminutive size and generally abused, his outburst may seem surprising. And yet we in the audience are likely to be smiling in giddy sympathy. This boisterous, bawdy and endlessly funny production, written entirely in rhymed verse and directed with meticulous abandon by John Rando, should put a spring in the step of even those of us beginning to dodder and wilt under the annual end-of-season theater blitz. It is indeed excessively good.
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