Review: A Flea in Her Ear by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
In the madcap 19th century world of French playwright Georges Feydeau, two qualities in farce are certain to produce merriment: man's unfulfilled desire and woman's unsatisfied curiosity.
No one ever says that, of course. This is not Oscar Wilde, his contemporary from across the channel.
The ample, delighted laughter at Austin Playhouse's production of A Flea in Her Ear is provoked by antics, deceptions and astonishing coincidences that bring respectable bourgeois folk sneaking into the shady world of the rent-by-the-hour Hotel Coq d'Or. That's the"Golden Rooster Hotel," with the bonus of the sly phallic reference for us English speakers -- in fact, Étienne the prissy butler to the Chandebise family disparages the institution as the "Hotel Cock de Whore!"
The centerpiece of the play is the voluminous bed at center stage in Act II -- focus of man's desire and woman's curiosity, and locale for wildly funny shifting and scrambling by the various characters. This being comedy, the bed never actually serves for seduction and recreation. It's variously a temptation, a hiding place, and, with the click of a strategically placed button, a turntable subterfuge that offers pretend respectability, complete with an arthritic, indignant old codger in a nightcap and nightshirt.
The most effective farce races along, taking familiar stereotypes into unexpected situations, teasing their vanities, and confounding their patently self-serving desires. In A Flea in Her Ear we meet the dry-stick bourgeois gentleman, his astonishing lowlife double the drunken porter at the hotel, a vain and simple-minded wife, a dapper n'er-do-well family friend who'd like to get up Madame's crinolines, a proper lady friend to Madame who gets talked into supporting a scheme to test husband's fidelity, the empty-headed butler and his concupiscent young wife, and a speech-impaired nephew regularly tasked with delivering vital messages, solely in vowels.
As Raymonde the wife and instigator of these shenanigans, Andrea Osborn (right) portrays her character as sweet, simple, and completely out of touch. She confides concern to her friend Lucienne (Boni Hester, left) -- Raymonde's husband Victor Emmanuel (David Stokey, left) used to be terribly ardent but for some time he hasn't -- or, that is, he hasn't been able to -- in brief, he seems to have lost interest. Perhaps there's another woman?
What better test than to forge a letter from an unknown seductress inviting him to a liaison? Lucienne uneasily agrees to help out by penning the missive, a mauve, perfumed timebomb that sets up a series of mishaps and misunderstandings. Lucienne is, after all, married to the hot-blooded (and very ardent) Spaniard Carlos Homenides de Histangua .
A chagrined Victor Emmanuel confides to his physician Dr. Finache (Douglas Taylor) that he has indeed had trouble getting up to his marital duty, and he seeks counsel. The letter arrives but Victor Emmanuel assumes that it was in fact meant for man-about-town Romain Tournel who had accompanied the couple to the opera. . . .et ainsi de suite, and so it goes on. . . .
No need for a meticulous recounting, when one can see all sorts of booby traps standing in the way of truth and reconciliation. This is nonsense at high speed. Comic timing is absolutely essential for farce, and this cast at Austin Playhouse under Don Toner's direction has got it just right.
One sparkling delight is David Stokey -- his transformations between two comic roles are crisp, surprising and complete. As he alternates between the good- hearted husband/insurance executive Victor Emmanuel and the goofy, dimwitted, bibulous and defensive hotel porter Poche, his voice, movement, and facial features go as loopy as caricature. And that's a stake he doubles: as identities are confused, bourgeois Victor Emmanuel gets his rear kicked with rigorous military discipline by Poche's employer, a recurring comic routine from which Stokey stampedes in comic evasion and alarm, quite unlike his bourgeois self.
Feydeau's plot could come across as a puppet show, but in this production it does not, because in his casting Toner has counter-weighted his nut cases with a couple of steady-footed, squared-off characters of substance. (Not the doctor, who turns out to be a besotted devotee of amorous afternoons at the hotel.)
The first anchor is the proprietor of the hotel, an unblinking and non-apologetic retired military sergeant major, Feraillon (the name suggests a mount of scrap iron). Steve Shearer is solemnly efficient and non-emotive throughout, whether demonstrating the marvelous revolving bed or putting his boot up the backside of Poche/Victor Emmanuel. With good military efficiency -- he has arrogated to himself the honorific of "colonel" -- he takes care of his clients and their desires, and he is surprised at nothing.
Anchoring the plot on the opposite bow is Ben Wolfe as Spanish nobleman Carlos Homenides de Histangua. Lucienne's trepidation about her husband is well-founded, for Carlos warned her on their honeymoon that in any case of infidelity he would pistol her and lover with the same bullet. Wolfe plays Spanish pride and haughtiness with burning concentration. His Castillian accent is superb and his Spanish entirely believable. Wolfe does a wonderful slow burn, complete with barely visible facial tic. His single-minded comic stalking of Lucienne and a non-existent lover throw delicious danger and thrill into otherwise frivolous caperings.
And a quick tip of the nightcap to Tom Parker, in the other set of paired roles -- as the squawking arthritic old gentleman employed for the revolving bed and as the German come to Paris without a word of French but with lechery for any woman passing through the hotel lobby. Parker is comic, even if you don't understand a word of German -- and even more funny if you do!
Review by Elizabeth Cobbe in Austin Chronicle of April 9, 2009
EXTRA:
A Flea in Her Ear
by Georges Feydeau
Austin Playhouse
