Life on a Swing!

Vincent Randazzo and Avanthika Srinivasan in The Triumph of Love. Photo by Liza Voll.

The Triumph of Love at The Huntington

By Pierre Carlet de Chamberlain de Marivaux

Adapted by Stephen Wadsworth

Directed by Loretta Greco

March 7, 2025 – April 6, 2025

Marianna Bassham and Nael Nacer. Photo by Liza Voll.

If you’ve got whiplash from life in these United States these days, maybe it’s time to dial back a few hundred years and let your head clear on an elegant swing in a beautiful country garden. Forget the trivial differences loitering among us these days, and tackle the existential issues of rationality versus romance. Give in to pure indulgence and give yourself over to The Triumph of Love.

The Triumph of Love is an Eighteenth-Century play by Pierre Carlet de Chamberlain de Marivaux that premiered at the Comédie Italienne in 1732. If you’re like me, your working knowledge of French theater begins and ends with Molière and the Comédie Francaise. Marivaux came later, and he favored the rival Italienne troupe, which premiered most of his thirty+ plays. Marivaux’s satire is less biting than Moliere’s, but his social insights are keen and his humor is, well, meveilleux! Especially in Stephen Wadsworth’s wonderful adaptation.

The plot is pure, juicy fantasy. Léonide, princess of some Duchy or other, gained the throne after her grandparents killed off the rightful king and claimed the crown. In short, she is illegitimate, though through no fault of her own. Agis, the rightful heir, was snatched away as a baby and has been raised by Hermocrate, a Philosopher of the Rational, who is secluded away in his gorgeous garden with his step-sister Léontine, where they’ve raised the rightful heir, now grown to a strapping Adonis, to distain any stirrings of the heart.

Léonide once viewed Agis in a wood and fell instantly in love with him. But she knows that he hates her from afar—after all she sits on the throne that should be his own. So what does she do? This being an Eighteenth-Century comedy of errors, she dresses as a man and weasels her way into the garden to try to win his heart before fully revealing herself. Every duplicity requires more duplicity, and in short order all rationality evaporates as Léontine falls in love with Léonide, the man; Hermocrate falls in love with Léonide, the woman. Agis, ever sheltered, seems ready to burst his heart open to pretty much anyone. To marinate the plot twists and general hijinks, toss in a hysterical Harlequin, a sage though word-muddling gardener, and Léonide’s faithful servant Corine (also in pants).

The set is gorgeous, the lighting sublime, and the cast is uniformly enchanting. Marianna Bassham, a perennial Boston theater favorite, is a stand-out as Léontine, in a dress so stiff she moves like a cut-out doll rigid as her Rationality, until she completely falls for love and scampers about in her opulent layers.

Go see The Triumph of Love. First, for the belly laughs. Then, to savor the joys of love that linger long afterward.

Cast of The Triumph of Love. Photo by Liza Voll.