Monsieur Baptiste: The Con Man

In MU Theatre’s production of Monsieur Baptiste: The Con Man, one of the main things that stuck out to me was the the delivery of dialogue. Throughout the production, the actors attempted to use a Cajun accent that would resemble the play’s mid-1800s New Orleans setting. However, each actor seemed to have their own version of what they thought was a Cajun accent, only distracting from the play. While, on paper the accents would have added to the quality of production, in reality the accents sounded like anything from Haitian to South Asian, depending on who was speaking. I don’t believe that anything would have been missing had the actors delivered their lines in their normal voices.

An impressive element of the production was the set. The set provided enough detail that it could be immediately understood that the play would take place in a large Southern home. The high walls and impressive staircase provided extra details that helped show the Alvarez family’s wealth and social class without much imagination from the audience. In addition, the veranda upstage was a unique addition to the set and provided more details into the home’s elegance and class.

Finally, an element that I found to be disappointing was the directing. More than once during the duration of the play, one or more of the actors had their back to the audience. Not only does this make it difficult on the audience to understand the emotions of the character, it makes it very difficult to hear lines being delivered. Often, during scenes that took place upstage, the audience would miss lines because the actor was facing the veranda rather than the audience. Along these same lines, during opening scenes of each act, actors would begin their lines even before the loud introduction music would stop. This proved especially true in the very first scene when the loud music more than covered up the actor’s voices, leading the audience just to guess what happened in the first minute of the play.

Plot Summary: A corrupt, religious boarder wins over the father and grandmother of the family with whom he is staying but does not fool anyone else. When this man begins to interfere with the lives of the family, a father must learn the hard way to always trust the instincts of his family.

Idea Summary: Sometimes your first impressions about a person should be reevaluated.