Molière, Medicine and a Famous Final Bow: The Surprising History Behind The Imaginary Invalid

We’ve all been there: symptoms materialize like a headache or an itchy throat, a quick internet search, and suddenly you’re going down an hours-long WebMD rabbit hole. It’s a time-honored tradition that comedy’s original hypochondriac could have only dreamed of. Argan, the hero of Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid, didn’t have a search engine—but he very much had a thriving passion for diagnosis. This fall, Bill Irwin brings Molière’s classic farce back to life on Broadway in a new adaptation. But before you head to the doctor’s office—cough, cough—the Todd Haimes Theatre, that is—there’s plenty to learn about this 350-year-old comédie-ballet, including one of history’s most famous onstage medical emergencies and the very real 17th-century “quackery” that inspired the story.

The Patient Will See You Now
Every comedy needs a fool, and Argan is one of the greats. A wealthy man in mostly good health, he’s convinced himself that he’s anything but. The solution to his imagined medical woes is to acquire a doctor rather permanently, marrying off his daughter Angélique to a physician and gaining free medical care for life in the process. Ingenious, right? But, as these sorts of parental matchmaking stories often go, Angélique is already in love with someone else and isn’t ready to go along with daddy’s unconventional plan to secure on-demand healthcare. Along the way, we meet Argan’s second wife, Béline, who is more than ready for her husband to hit the bucket, and Toinette, the maid, who seems to be one of the few members of the household who understands what’s really happening at any given moment.

Commedia dell’Arte Tradition
Molière’s characters—and even the plot—were not wholly original. And while that sounds like a knock on the famous French playwright, whose real name was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, it was a smart choice for the time period. Molière borrowed many of the building blocks for his farce from Commedia dell’Arte, the Italian tradition known for stock characters and improvised scenarios. The art form was extremely popular in the 1600s, and Molière and much of his audience would have been highly familiar with its biggest themes and faces.

By basing The Imaginary Invalid on Commedia dell’Arte characters, audiences were able to dive into the antics of the show quickly, with little need for backstory or character development. Argan is a classic Pantalone, a wealthy old miser hoarding money (and, in this case, healthcare). Angélique and her lover Cléante are the Innamorati, young lovers with a guaranteed happy ending. The doctors in the show are based on Dottore, characters meant to satirize pompous, know-it-all academics. The maid, Toinette, was likely based on Columbina, commedia’s faithful servant always three steps ahead of her foolish boss.

Moliere’s Most Dramatic Exit
Despite positive early reviews when it opened at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal on February 10, 1673, the play’s first production took a fateful turn just a week later. Molière, who himself was starring in the role of Argan, had been sick for some time. During the show’s fourth performance on February 17, he collapsed on stage. It’s thought that the medical emergency was due to a stroke associated with tuberculosis. Nevertheless, he would finish the show. Just an hour or so later—refusing help from doctors—he passed away. “Press” for the show, largely, from that point forward, would focus not on the show’s wit or cunning story, but on Molière’s most dramatic and final exit.

Skewering 17th Century Medicine (or a lack thereof)
It is the show’s ultimate irony—a sick and unwell man writing a comedy about a man who only thinks he’s sick and dying. Historians believe the show’s themes may have been born out of Molière’s own contempt for doctors. Throughout his life—and frequently in his plays—Molière expressed ridicule of physicians, portraying them as con men more interested in exploiting patients than helping them.

His skepticism of doctors seems pretty valid considering reality. 17th-century medical training largely revolved around an education in rhetorical argument, with comparatively little hands-on practice. Consider this: dissection for medical purposes was restricted by law to be performed only on executed criminals, and the thermometer had yet to be invented. Without much bodily-based evidence or training, physicians instead debated issues like whether the moon’s phases should factor into haircuts. Meanwhile, the go-to cure for many ailments was the enema, which, not coincidentally, is one of Argan’s favorite topics of conversation in the play.

The Road to Comédie Ballet
Molière’s knack for skewering the elite with laughs, whether it focused on doctors or priests, brought him equal parts success and controversy. Don Juan, which features a free-thinking nobleman who defies God, was banned almost as soon as it opened. Tartuffe, a farce about a religious con man, was banned outright for five years—it took the king personally overruling the Church to get it back on stage.

Speaking of the king, he was the one person Molière never truly dared to provoke. In fact, in his efforts to please the country’s monarch, the artist created a new theatrical genre. King Louis XIV adored music and dance, and with this royal patron in mind, Molière fashioned the comédie-ballet. Working together with musicians and dancers, he’d splice together comic scripts with full musical and dance interludes. For a fully-realized example, look no further than The Imaginary Invalid itself, which originally featured interludes between each act and a full musical finale.

From Cyclops to Hypochondriac
Bringing the beloved French farce back to Broadway for the first time since 1967 is actor, comedian and clown Bill Irwin. The Tony Award winner is capping off a genre-spanning year—from a very large one-eyed monster to a bold, but small-minded hypochondriac. This past summer, audiences caught Irwin as the cyclops Polyphemus in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Now, he’s trading the cyclops' famous cave for the Haimes Theatre.

Irwin last brought Moliere’s work to life when he adapted Les Fourberies de Scapin, playing the title clown himself both at Seattle Rep and later off-Broadway. But returning to The Imaginary Invalid, and the role of Argan, has been weighing on him with each passing year—Irwin first took on the role in high school.

“It’s been nagging at me for decades and decades,” Irwin told Broadway.com. “Now, I’m quintessentially qualified, because I’m an old man who has to think about end of life; not as an abstraction, but the real deal.” Thinking about the end, Irwin says, moves people to act, sometimes with compassion, and other times out of self-preservation. “It either makes us reach out to those we love, or it makes us say, ‘I’ll sell you out to get what I need,’ which I think is a doctor who will save me from death.”

A Talented Troupe
Joining Irwin on the main stem is a cast built for the ultimate farce. Among the players, Brooks Ashmanskas (The Prom, SMASH) takes on the dual roles of Dr. Diafoirus and Purgon; Ava Lalezarzadeh (English) fights off an arranged marriage as Angélique; and Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) makes her Broadway debut as the maid Toinette. Putting it all together is Brandon J. Dirden (Waiting for Godot, Skeleton Crew), making his Broadway directorial debut.

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