From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment, but you can also hear at KCRW.com. My guest, writer, director,

actor, Tim Robbins, has always been known for putting his money where his mouth is.

Now, of course, you know for movies such as Bull Durham, his Oscar winning turn in Mystic River.

But for many years now, he's been keeping alive with a very intrepid group of actors,

a repertory company here in L.A., the actors gang.

Their newest production is a terrific head-turning staging of the rivals. very intrepid group of actors, a repertory company here in LA, the actors gang. Their

newest production is a terrific head-turning staging of the rivals. One of the greatest

farces, certainly of, I guess this is the 18th century, was it? Tim, first of all, thanks so much

for coming back. Oh, my pleasure. Yeah. It's George Washington's favorite play.

Well, that tells you everything you need to know about it.

But as we were talking about before we got going,

my memory just from school is that it was roundly attacked just for the Falkland character.

I mean, the lead character in the play, because obviously, to your mind,

he was probably really misunderstood that character, wasn't it?

A lot of the characters are misunderstood, and a lot of the play, I think the social

mores at the time just would not tolerate it.

It was, you know, rebald and, you know, it was a raunchy little romp.

And, of course, there's the idea that one of the servants is making a whole bunch of money off of all the dumb

aristocracy and, you know, all kinds of things like that. But it's also the play that gave

birth to the word malapropism. There's a character called Mrs. Malaprop who is one of the funniest

characters ever written, just constantly mispronouncing

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