Moliere's 'Scapino' brought into 21st century at Gulfshore Playhouse

Jeff Binder doesn't mention that the title character of "Scapino" was written for him.

Binder, associate artistic director of Gulfshore Playhouse, talks about admiring Moliere as a playwright-actor whose intimacy with the stage filtered into his scripts.

He mentions the ultimately benevolent tone of "Scapino" — the Gulfshore Playhouse production opening Saturday — as a new facet of Moliere for some theatergoers weaned on the more acid "Tartuffe."

He talks about the opportunity to examine the play, like a jeweler inspecting a diamond, rolling its words around in his mind "through five of these old public domain versions"  during his Hurricane Irma-enforced sabbatical.

But truth is, Binder is looking at playing what may be one of his favorite characters in theater: the sly, scheming, Scapino, who rationalizes his behavior because justice is a lover who has jilted him — rather conveniently, one suspects. Binder didn't flinch at rewriting the script to bring it into a pair of 20th century mob families suspected of  commandeering their son's life to forge an alliance in their fractious relationships, with Scapino running comic interference to stop the freight train.

It's very much an actor's play and Binder, in the lead role, has the rarest of opportunities to put the words that would energize that character into his mouth.

Judiciously, of course: "It's an all-new, a completely new text. We call it an adaptation of Moliere. That's what it is. But obviously Moliere was French, and writing in the 1680s," he said.

This audience is 21st century, when fathers generally don't choose their sons' spouses, and when women are heard as well as seen. Binder, director Zeljiko Djukic and Gulfshore Playhouse Artistic Director Kristen Coury wanted to bring the female characters out of the cardboard cut-out level they had been relegated to in this play. 

They further needed to retool the landed gentry status of its characters into something more familiar to American identity. 

"The plot structure is very much Moliere's, but line for line, we decided to do it as an homage to 'The Godfather,' in a comic way," Binder said.

"We were trying to find a context in a modern sensibility to bring the audience into a world where they understood the stakes for these young lovers and what they were up against. — and these fathers who have these demands they've gone against. The idea that these weddings between the families can mend a rift and avoid a turf war ... puts the stakes at a very fun level you understand."

With a mission to stay true to the playwright's premise, Binder said the down time when the Norris Community Center in Naples was closed after Hurricane Irma actually gave him three weeks to craft his changes.

"My family and mom and four cats and I drove to Mobile, Alabama. I'm sitting in Mobile and I had many days of time in front of me," he recalled. Still, plunging into it was "a little scary," he conceded: "You don't know whether you're going to get two-thirds of the way through it and say, 'This is just not coming together.'"

Luckily, this play made the four-century leap gracefully. Binder spent several days with Djukic in Chicago and, to test the newly stoked roles for the female characters, he and Coury had them read aloud: "The cast of  'leading ladies' were very gracious to do a cold read so we could hear what it sounded like."

Binder estimates he has several hundred hours in this play. That's possibly not too much different from what the playwright had when he wrote to enable his actors to keep working with minimal sets during a theater renovation.

"It's really kind of a celebration of commedia, of comedy, of farce and of actors and how they transform. Scapino actually becomes all these people. He also enlists his friends in the task to do this thing. ... It  really allows actors to dig into some fun, hilarious material and shine in their craft."

'Scapino'

Where: Gulfshore Playhouse at Norris Community Center, 755 Eighth Ave S., Naples

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays (8 p.m. Feb. 25) through March 18, with audience talkbacks and other events on various days

Tickets:$20-$64

To buy: gulfshoreplayhouse.org or 866-811-4111