High-flying farce

2nd Story’s madcap Flea In Her Ear

February 13, 2007 6:03:58 PM

LET THE HILARIOUS TIMES ROLL: Eric Behr and Vince Petronio.

Forced farce is worse than no farce at all, even when you need some badly. But Georges Feydeau could let the hilarious times roll with the pratfall ease of tripping with an armload of baguettes. His most famous comedy, A Flea In Her Ear (through February 25), is getting a Vite! Vite! rendition by 2nd Story Theatre, in a sprightly translation by one of the performing members, no less.

This being 2nd Story, when we sit down and notice set designer Tristan Jeffers’s two pairs of doors facing each other across a living room carpet (more will be added for the second act), we know they will be opened and closed with enthusiasm. Since it’s under Ed Shea’s animated direction, after all, you half expect the furniture to start dashing about.

This play is 100 years old this year, and Ryan Maxwell — who plays the recreationally amorous Romain Tournel — had as much fun on the page as he has on the stage, translating the play’s timeless theme of infidelity and the even more comical suspicion thereof. The hilarity is retained and freshness is gained. Even changing the name of a tryst hotel from the Coq d’Or to the Swaggering Cock retains the double meaning while updating the imagery.

Much of the fun here is amplified by the irony of the central character being innocent of any hanky-panky, at least this time around. Chandebise (Jim Sullivan) is not only not fooling around on his wife, he’s not even fooling around with her. Tempo¬rary impotence because of a psychological nervous condition has been keeping him from depriving his wife of sleep through anything more raucous than snoring. For her part, Raymonde (Rachel Morris) as¬sumes that he has a mistress. All this is swiftly set up, under the credits, so to speak.

Feydeau’s plot constructions have been compared to antiphonal fugues, and he certainly strikes plenty of carefully considered notes here. Raymonde’s confidante is her visiting friend Lucienne (Hillary Parker), the wife of a Spaniard, which to French audiences was shorthand for hot temper and irrational jealousy. We get the picture even before her husband, Carlos Homenides de Histangua (Luis Astudillo), eventually appears in a toreador costume, nostrils flaring.

Too cleverly for her own good, Raymonde has Lucienne write an unsigned perfumed letter to her husband, Chandebise, saying that she was smitten at first glance, seeing him at the theater, and is tearfully begging an assignation that evening. In a plausible characterizing touch, the modest Chandebise assumes that the woman misidentified him as the handsome young man who was with him that evening, Tournel (Maxwell), and sends him to the hotel in his place.

Don’t all those lit fuses make you smile already? I didn't even mention the jealous butler Philippe (Tom Roberts) and his wife, the maid Antoinette (Monique Shaghalian), who gives him good reason to be suspicious. Before long, nearly everyone is hot-footing about, fluttering their hands in the air. But Feydeau, not satisfied with sight gags, tosses in a sound gag: the speech impediment of Chandebise’s nephew Camille (Dillon Medina). He is unable to enunciate consonants. That is funny enough in casual conversation, but it gets rollicking when the message is something like “Run for your life!”

Medina milks those opportunities with wide-eyed innocence. Feydeau is juggling so many balls that, unfortunately, he doesn’t take much advantage of a clever gimmick that allows Camille to speak normally: a silver palate devised by Dr. Finache (John Michael Richardson) that he loses and finds again. But once they are at the hotel, with all those extra doors to slam, there's plenty else to slap knees about. Proprietor Ferraillon (Vince Petronio) never wears more than undershirt and shorts, and he’s beamingly proud over his wife Olympe (Paula Faber) having been such a high-priced hooker in her day. A horny German (Eric Behr) who doesn’t speak English thinks that every woman who shows up is the prostitute he’s ordered.

Sullivan trusts the situation to be funny, so he establishes Chandebise as a naturalistic, hapless Everyman at the beginning, before things get wacky. And we know from previous productions that Sullivan certainly can handle wacky. Upon demand, that’s also so for the rest of this delightful ensemble of 15. Particularly enjoying himself is Astudillo, who normally has a charming Chilean accent and here can ratchet it up to a Castilian lisp — and wave pistols around, to boot.

Known for presenting comedies with the briskness of farce, 2nd Story Theatre can be relied on to deliver farce with breezy, double-time confidence. Between laugh-meister Feydeau, ringmaster Shea, and humor-transmuter Maxwell, A Flea In Her Ear is great fun, indeed.