Matthew Broderick Stars as the Titular Grifter in “Tartuffe”

Cross and Broderick here offer studies in otiose passivity. Each gets big laughs from portraying inertia: their performances abound in side-eyed glances and awkward pauses followed by “So . . .” These gags can be funny, but the propulsive mechanics of farce require more of a sense of movement. As in many Molière plays, the setting (designed here by the collective called dots) is a kind of all-purpose room, a public-private parlor in Orgon’s house where guests and residents alike can rush in and out. There are lines drawn on the floor, which recall a room being readied for painting or possibly a Sun King-era tennis court. When either of the two stars took the stage, though, I thought of a car that breaks down in the middle of a road and then stays there, hazards blinking, as traffic detours around it.

And something has certainly stalled in this particular meeting between playwright and playwright. Hnath, whose writing in, say, “A Doll’s House, Part 2” or “The Thin Place” relies on the well-placed pause, is less deft when shaping rhyming couplets, which must be taken, like fences, at a gallop. Fashioning an English version out of Molière’s hexameter is notoriously difficult, particularly because the poet Richard Wilbur already dominates the field, with a shelf’s worth of intricate lacework translations. Other adapters have taken their sparkling turns, like David Ives (who has made a long practice of verse adaptation) and Hatcher, who avoided the whole poetry issue in his zippy “Imaginary Invalid” because the original was written in prose. But Hnath, working from Curtis Hidden Page’s translation, from 1908, gets tangled up in the requirements of rhyme and is forced into some unfortunate expediencies, as well as the occasional repetition.

For contrast, here’s the Wilbur, from 1965, when Cléante is chastising Orgon for failing to see through Tartuffe’s playacting religiosity: “There’s a vast difference, so it seems to me / Between true piety and hypocrisy: / How do you fail to see it, may I ask? / Is not a face quite different from a mask?” In roughly the same place in Hnath’s script (there’s no exact correspondence, because he has made savvy cuts, to craft an intermissionless hour-and-fifty-minute show), we hear Cléante say, “It’s not hard for someone to act like they’re holy / and not actually be holy, / and in fact, those I know who are holiest / are far from the showiest.” With versifiers, too, we can distinguish a mask from the real thing when we see them side by side.

What Hnath has done, though, is keep his eye on the larger rhymes, namely, the ones with our current era. He emphasizes the rex-ex-machina ending, for instance, in which Louis XIV, as represented by a royal decree that arrives at the last possible moment, sweeps away all of Tartuffe’s machinations and plots. Various sketched-in relationships in the original involve Orgon’s support for the royal side during the wars of the Fronde, but Hnath tweaks these into indications of some past financial impropriety. In a dicey moment when Orgon thinks that his secret crookedness might mean his family’s utter ruin, a messenger from the King arrives. Donors get to play by a different set of rules.

At this point, there has been very little overt political commentary in the production, which otherwise points to modernity mainly in its language. (Tartuffe is a “dipshit,” etc.) But here, when we see a ruler bending legality for his friend’s benefit, we recognize our current White House’s pardon-as-golden-ticket strategy. Molière, mindful that Louis was his patron—not to mention the rescuer of the interdicted “Tartuffe” itself, which had been banned for five years because it annoyed the Church—would never have implied that the King’s final gesture was anything other than a touch of grace. Hnath, though, uses this moment as a queasy reminder of what it is to live in a country with a sovereign executive. “We all know and we agree / We’re the good ones obviously,” the cast sings, dolefully, as the music (composed by the great Heather Christian) turns increasingly sour, like clabbered milk left out on Election Night.

Happily, there are pleasures that precede this grimness. Benson, whose connection to the Off Broadway experimental scene runs deep, has cast two of the finest comic performers in town as the play’s young lovers, and although they cannot be onstage all the time, it is not for lack of trying. Davis, wearing a particularly Bo Peep-y set of pink panniers, turns the character into a masterpiece of clownery, sulking delightfully and throwing magnificent tantrums while her arrangement of topknots—the hair designer is Robert Pickens—bounces on her head like a prize curly lamb. This Mariane makes little rushes at people, particularly the capable Dorine, eager to fling herself at someone’s feet. Davis’s many bouffon gifts include a mouth that she can make completely diagonal, registering gradations of concern from unease to outright panic as the angle increases.