Chair Trouble, Bill Irwin Turns Molière's Hypochondriac Loose

The sickest man on West 42nd Street has nothing wrong with him.

His name is Argan, he is rich, and he spends the money on doctors who tell him what he wants to hear. Bill Irwin plays him in *The Imaginary Invalid* at the Todd Haimes Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street, where Roundabout Theatre Company has been running previews since September 25.

The official opening is October 22. That is ten days from now.

The Patient and the Plan

Argan schemes to marry his daughter Angélique to a doctor, so he gets free medical care for life. Angélique is already in love with someone else. Antics follow, as Broadway.com tells it.

Irwin wrote this version himself. He first played Argan in high school and says he has been thinking about the play for around 60 years. Many scholars prefer *The Miser*, he told Broadway.com. He prefers this one, Molière's last.

He did not start with a blank page. Irwin told Broadway News he first commissioned a fresh word-for-word English translation from Doug Skinner, a longtime colleague, who is credited on the show for the translation. The adaptation is Irwin's. The plain English underneath it is Skinner's.

He also knew what he was up against. Scholars call the play a "problem play," Irwin told Broadway News, and he recruited a director to help solve it.

Broadway News reports that this is the first Broadway revival in nearly 60 years. The last one briefly played the ANTA Playhouse, now the August Wilson, in 1967. The play first reached Broadway in 1917. Both of those productions were billed as translations.

"It's like humanity flayed open."

That is how Irwin tells Broadway.com to approach the play, with one instruction first. Listen carefully.

The Company in the Room

Irwin's roots are in the circus ring. His Roundabout biography lists the Pickle Family Circus, where he was an original member, the solo shows *Fool Moon* and *Old Hats*, and a 2005 Tony Award for *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?*

Molière, it turns out, wrote a part for a man like that, though not the part you would guess. Irwin notes that Molière made Argan in many ways the straight man, who sets up the punchlines for everyone else.

The problem-solver is Brandon J. Dirden, who makes his Broadway directing debut with this production, according to Broadway News. Dirden says Irwin has "infinite curiosity," and that the two like to obsess over the smallest things until the story gets better.

The cast around them is deep. Per Roundabout's cast list, Brooks Ashmanskas plays the doctors Diafoirus and Purgon. Dylan Baker plays Argan's brother Beralde. Rachel Bloom plays the maid Toinette, the servant who runs the room. Crystal A. Dickinson is Beline, Argan's wife. Ava Lalezarzadeh and Daniel Croix Henderson play the young lovers, and Hiram Delgado covers three smaller parts.

Irwin calls the company a quick pickup team, elaborately negotiated. All they have to do, he told Broadway.com, is become the New York Knicks. It is a very New York ambition.

Beowulf Boritt designed the sets and Karen Perry the costumes. Allen Lee Hughes handles lighting, and John Gromada sound and original music. Lorenzo Pisoni is credited with movement direction, which in a farce is not a small job.

Molière wrote the part of Argan for himself. According to Broadway.com, he was ill while writing it and led the company for only four performances, then collapsed on stage and died later that evening. It is a hard fact to carry into a comedy about fear of dying.

The reviews that count arrive after the October 22 opening. Until then, the evidence is the cast, the clock and the play.

What to Know Before You Go

The Imaginary Invalid plays the Todd Haimes Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street, through November 22, according to Roundabout. Opening night is October 22, per the Playbill schedule. The running time is 90 minutes with no intermission, and the production uses theatrical haze.

Tickets and the performance calendar are on Roundabout's site. On November 3 and 10, understudy Madeline Seidman plays Toinette in place of Bloom.

For another classic comedy heading to Broadway this fall, see Hiddleston and Atwell's Much Ado at the Winter Garden.

The patient is in until November 22. Somebody pull up a chair.