“Tartuffe (Remixed)” at Marylebone Theatre

Jeremy Malies in Central London
★★★★☆
15 September 2026

“I went to school with Mahatma Gandhi / I think it’s best that you unhand me.” Not Cole Porter or Alexander Pope but it’s crisp enough. After performing Venus and Adonis at the 270-capacity Marylebone Theatre, Mark Rylance returns to play the title role in Darren Raymond’s adaptation of Molière’s 1664 play Tartuffe. Raymond (who also directs) is a longtime collaborator with Rylance through the company Intermission Youth.

Usifu Jalloh and Craig Blake.
Photo credit: Mark Senior.

The setting of Tartuffe (Remixed) is central London and the mansion of a super-wealthy Nigerian family who still own property in Lagos but are part of the diaspora. They attend a charismatic Christian church near Covent Garden into which has wandered Rylance’s character, an endearing maverick Irish pastor by the name of Blake or Tartuffe.

Rylance goes right through his formidable toolkit to conjure up a rackety Graham Greene-style character. His only clothes (patched) are the clerical suit he stands up in. The family want him to minister to them but lady of the house Elmire (one of the few names to survive from the original) thinks he should stay at Premier Inn and is proved right. Playing this principal female character, Nakeba Buchanan turns in one of the best performances of a generally excellent night.

Raymond – it’s surely always a risky decision – has opted to direct the adaptation himself and might want to trim the 185-minute running time. But he brings Rylance and Buchanan through the most difficult scenes of the night, these being two would-be seductions with the second being stage managed by Elmire to entrap her visitor.

Using an Alexa equivalent, Elmire chooses the sensual textures of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” whereupon Rylance divests himself of dog collar and trousers to reveal a tatty vest and Y-fronts. He briefly shuffles around the room with trousers around his ankles – more Feydeau than anything else. Even here Rylance shows his team spirit – not once does he suck the oxygen out of the room and as director (some of his decisions later on are less assured) Raymond ensures that things remain fluid and never tacky.

Tartuffe is usually a lay religious advisor or shaman-like figure. Raymond extracts much comedy from having him as a clergyman. Rylance mangles (deliciously) the Old Testament stories that grandmother of the house played by Suzette Llewellyn knows well. She is equally confused when the family’s new cleric seems unsure as to exactly what happened at Calvary.

Another highpoint during which Rylance interacts in a forensic manner with Llewellyn comes as the pastor tries to defraud her of savings with the particularly vile suggestion that she will be buying tools for would-be craftsmen in the adjacent village. I’m not sure how this squares with the Covent Garden setting and often thought that Raymond has not decided whether the backdrop is Nigeria or London.

Photo credit: Mark Senior.

The great plot development comes when Blake decides (in between the two attempted seductions of Elmire) that he wishes to marry daughter of the house Adanna played by Sara Mokonen. She is another outstanding element in the cast and excels in the, for the time, farsighted speech about liberating herself from chattel status when her father, Oga Afolabi played by Usifu Jalloh, simply promises her to the pastor. Mokonen has all the agency and spirit of a Shakespearian heroine in the later comedies and underlines Raymond’s experience with the Bard.

Designer ULTZ works with one set only with servants bringing on tables and a few props. The design is successful in being stylized (a little larger than life) and somewhat abstract or even Pop Art. Numerous suitcases suggest that though this family is jet-set it is rootless.

There is even some playful cultural appropriation based on the fact that this is not exclusively a Nigerian family. Elmire is Oga’s second wife and is from the Caribbean as are visitors Sinclair (Ivandro Da Cruz Leite) who hopes to marry Adanna and his father Delroy played by Craig Blake. As things go awry and Sinclair needs to ingratiate himself with his intended in-laws, Delroy tells him to learn three words of Yoruba and use them at the dinner table!

Later Da Cruz Leite steers an outstanding scene when his character mistakenly drinks an inhibition-removing elixir intended for Pastor Blake. Da Cruz Leite impresses when his character becomes vulgar and sexually suggestive with every layer of his modesty (carefully built up earlier) unravelling.

I did question the Nigerian–Caribbean dual theme. Perhaps I am too much of a purist, but I wondered if the other group of people (as with Inua Ellams’s Three Sisters which is set in Nigeria) might have been from another Nigerian tribal group such as Igbo. Why introduce another country?

If Raymond intends a cultural collision, I wonder what the collision is about. The breakdown is not cultural; it is the generally destructive presence of Blake. And does Delroy really need to be reduced to wearing a Bob Marley “One Love” t-shirt? Can costume supervisor Maybelle Laye not come up with something more subtle and less stereotypical? She does far better with Oga’s saturated turquoise Nigerian agbada (pictured).

Usifu Jalloh and Mark Rylance.
Photo credit: Mark Senior.

This is a group effort but it’s impossible not to come back to the unctuous figure of Rylance. “I am but dust – I tremble at such praise!” A prayer book with gold embossed leaves is clutched at all times but occasionally the pastor must remind himself to hold it the right way up. Rylance sports a set of false teeth which are put to great comic use. He can convulse the entire space with his eyebrows, and his movements are like the gambols of a pony when he sees an opportunity for a swindle or the conquest of Elmire seems likely. He claims to regard his Ponzi schemes (more likely naked theft) as a Christian redistribution of wealth.

In the penultimate scene, the cast sang “How Great Thou Art” and as the melody became more expansive, it was all I could do to stop myself from joining in, in what is a very enjoyable show.