The Misanthrope
Alceste hates social hypocrisy but falls in love with the biggest flirt at court. Moliere wrote his darkest comedy here: the man who insists on total honesty turns out to be as self-deluded as everyone he despises. Moliere played Alceste himself. The role is considered the Hamlet of French theater.
The plot runs almost entirely on talk, Celimene's identical love letters to competing suitors and Alceste's ultimatum over them, and even an admiring review admits flatly that just about nothing happens beyond conversation. One reader pans an audiobook production specifically, saying the female narrators sounded “shrill, weak, inappropriate,” and found most of the dialogue given to the women thin next to Alceste's lines. The four acts of buildup resolve fast, more asserted than earned, according to more than one reader. A staged production review knocks a set “so minimalist the actors are hard-pressed for a place to sit down,” faulting the mismatch between elaborate costumes and bare scenery, and pushes the company to drop “proscenium staging left-over from your former theater downtown.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
