DON JUAN

At the Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher St., at Hudson Street. TeleCharge, (212) 239-6200. Through April 13.

IN “Don Juan,” one of his oddest, most perverse plays, Moliere created a wicked central figure more compelling than the fools and fops around him.

Written in 1665, right after “Tartuffe,” which dealt triumphantly with a seemingly successful villain, this “Don Juan” features a monster of lust, godlessness and cruelty, unbalanced by any other character in the play.

In Christopher Hampton’s flat translation of “Don Juan,” presented by The Theatre for a New Audience at the Lucille Lortel, director Bartlett Sher and designer Christopher Akerlind have devised a look and feel for the play that in effect takes it back to the Spain from which the legend comes.

The stage is bare except for racks of dark male clothing hanging from the ceiling. These, I suspect, are supposed to symbolize vanity. They symbolize something, anyway.

Juan is a morbidly vain thing who spends much of the play – when he’s not guzzling from a bottle – putting on an elaborate coat of white makeup like a Kabuki actor’s.

The women he seduces (or tries to) are mainly voluptuous peasants paralyzed by his mesmeric allure. His wife, who may or not be dead, flits by from time to time.

After making fun of his wife’s vengeful brothers, his disinheriting father and a credulous creditor, Juan finally meets his fate in the shape of a statue that drags him off to hell. His servant, Sganarelle, is left demanding his lost wages.

Byron Jennings, arch and contemptuous, makes a Juan so repulsive that we can’t wait until he’s destroyed, while John Christopher Jones does a good job as a pudgy, out-for-himself Sganarelle.

But this “Don Juan” creates a world as hideous as its hero. It takes away the little contrast Moliere offered.