As stuffed full of well-measured comedic performances and lush production values as you are likely to see anytime soon, Newell’s Misanthrope feels as hedonistically indulgent as any French courtier. Like an opulent Parisian banquet (or a drag ball in Harlem), it’s strengths are in its cultivation of the surface’s glittering allure. And in never deigning to take itself as seriously as Alceste takes himself, this production still manages to probe deeper than any hair-brained philosophy.

But if the consciously gray moral tones of Snyder’s production strike us as being overly conciliatory toward its anti-heroes, we should realize that it offers us something decidedly more interesting than its sharp moral disapproval. By opening us up to the subtle seductions of the rakish mindset, In the Company of Men dislodges us from the place where moral judgements feel simply automatic. Rather, we are afforded the opportunity to see our own objections for what they are: the strident disapproval of a middle-class railing against its self-proclaimed ‘betters.’

“Everything actually has to happen, doesn’t it? You think in your mind things can happen without happening, but in the end, they always have to actually happen.” Or so says Beth, a Pine City housewife in Craig Wright’s 2002 Orange Flower Water, currently on view at Raven Theater. And though its tempting to dwell on how conveniently self-serving Beth’s position may be as she prepares to leave her husband for a different married man, her sense of not being in control of her own life is point that gets made on more than one occasion in this play—and in more than one way.