‘The Miser’ Review: Updating Molière, but Missing a Key Ingredient

Key Facts

From left, MaYaa Boateng, Ismenia Mendes, Lakisha Ma and Alana Raquel Bowers in the Molière in the Park production of “The Miser” in Brooklyn
Where Molière stands out, however, is as a sharp social satirist whose denouncing of the vain, the hypocritical and the simply deluded has not aged — once timely, it is now timeless.
Unfortunately it is precisely that element that is missing from the Molière in the Park production of “The Miser” at the LeFrak Center in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.
That women are playing Cleante (a man in the original) and Harpagon indicates that the director Lucie Tiberghien, who is also the artistic director of Molière in the Park, is not stuck in tradition.