From the NEW YORK TIMES, July, 1996 "On Stage, and Off" column.
They give the run-down for the Roundabout's new season, which includes: "And in the Laura Pels Theater in December, Bill Irwin will direct and star in a new version of Moliere's Scapin."
(thanks to David Fristrom for this info)
Playbill On-Line had this to say:
"New Vaudeville clown Bill Irwin will recreate his acclaimed Seattle
Rep production of Moliere's Scapin off-Broadway this winter.
Irwin will direct and star in the new adaptation at Roundabout Theatre
Company's Laura Pels Theatre (Dec. 4, 1996-March 9, 1997). Irwin, who
will play the wily servant Scapin, last appeared in New York in a
Broadway revival of his Fool Moon in December 1995."
From Playbill On-Line 1/97:
Scapin was scheduled to run through March 9 but has been extended one
week, to March 16. Production spokesperson Erin Dunn told Playbill On-Line
the extension was due to "an overwhelming response to the show": "also,
we're fortunate that they can stay an extra week."
Read the Playbill
Online interview with Bill about his show Scapin.
I have managed to find an online text of Scapin, but only in French.
A quick summary from the 1970 English version:
Scapino is a comedy classic that leaps across time, national boundries and
the usual limits of the stage. This modern adaptation of Moliere's comic
masterpiece Les Fourberies de Scapin (The Rascalities of Scapin) set
audiences on both sides of the Atlantic guffawing delightedly in the 1970s.
Three hundred years earlier - in 1671 - this play was Moliere's answer to the threatening competition on his own turf in Paris of the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, the formalized farces with such stock characters as Harlequin, Columbine and Pantaloon.
In 1970 the British Young Vic Theatre picked up this old laugh-maker and
turned it into a madcap music hall romp, moving the plot of the play from
France, back to the historical home of the commedia, Italy. The plot is
this: the servant Scapino practices a series of merry pranks, frustrating
the efforts of two miserly fathers to spoil the romances of their sons.
Assisting Scapino in his athletic endeavors at matchmaking is another
servant, a happily besotted tramp, a purse-lipped nurse, and various
denizens of the waterfront cafe that is the play's setting, all characters
updated from Moliere's comedy into the modern Neopolitans of this version.
Bill's version was published in Spring 1997.
Dramatists Play Service has provided a summary and ordering data.