The Heir Apparent Adapted by David Ives from the play by Jean-Francois Regnard (Rediscovery)

From the New York Times: Mr. Ives, a playwright whose tasty psychodrama, "Venus in Fur," opens on Broadway next month after an acclaimed run at the Classic Stage Company in New York two seasons ago, has lately been pursuing a fruitful sideline in retailoring French classics in more contemporary cuts. Mr. Ives's "School for Lies," an inspired reworking of Molière's "Misanthrope," was a popular hit for Classic Stage last spring. His similarly acclaimed version of "The Liar," a 1634 play by Corneille, was seen at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington last season. Now he has dug more deeply into the library stacks to resurrect a comedy about money lust by a lesser-known French playwright, Jean-François Regnard's 1708 play, "The Heir Apparent." Mr. Ives's French dictionary and his rhyming dictionary are by now probably similarly tattered, since the new translation, like that of "The School for Lies," is rendered in niftily rhymed couplets that evoke the style of the original. Once again Mr. Ives freely indulges in contemporary allusion, adding a vivifying seasoning of freshness to a farcical plot that combines elements of classic French comedy with more robust Italianate buffoonery.