(Laura Collins-Hughes’s article appeared in The New York Times, 1/27.)
Like a slightly dotty professor addressing a lecture hall, Marylouise Burke paces the stage and talks of Molière. He wanted to be a tragic actor, she tells us in her cartoon voice, but his stutter sent him into comedy instead.
Tiny and fluttery, Ms. Burke seems made for the purely comic, too. A favorite of David Lindsay-Abaire’s, she’s a surprising match for the experimental companies Mabou Mines and Trick Saddle. That’s true even though part of her charge in their new show, “Imagining the Imaginary Invalid” — a large-cast elegy with laughter, loosely remixed from Molière’s play “The Imaginary Invalid” — is the starring role of the ridiculous hypochondriac Argan.