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On Stage: There's something about Feydeau 'A Flea in Her Ear' is an over-the-top, politically incorrect but hilarious French farce Friday, February 19, 1999 By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
In the politically correct '90s, new stage shows that may offend some disaffected social group rarely see an opening night. That's why the risqué performance of a 100-year-old French farce seems as distant from the modern stage as "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons" from Must-See TV.
In Georges Feydeau's "A Flea in Her Ear," a circle of French snobs mock and belittle a man's erectile dysfunction, smack and kick a servant of diminished mental capacity, mimic a subordinate's speech impediment, encourage bigotry, xenophobia and alcoholism and force several woman to have nonconsensual, unprotected sex.
Fortunately the PC police never arrive. Address your letters of outrage to the above byline, but portions of the CMU production are simply hilarious. The exaggerated stereotypes are send-ups of larger-than-life caricatures, and the situations are equally enlarged for effect. Everyone gets ridiculed in some part of "A Flea in Her Ear," and most members of the student cast do a fine job of mocking, insulting, groping, smacking, kicking and belittling their inferiors.
Feydeau retains a reputation for highly physical farces centered on bizarre, escalating situations. In "A Flea in Her Ear," the wife of an insurance magnate gets a bee in her bonnet over suspicions that her husband is having an affair. With the help of a friend, she sends him a lascivious invitation from a supposedly anonymous admirer, just to see if he'll show for the rendezvous. Instead, she inadvertently exposes the affairs of the wait staff and customers at the sleazy Lanterne Rouge Hotel and reveals her own illicit liaison to her devoted, monogamous husband.
'A Flea In Her Ear'
The pace is quick and the timing precise under the direction of Jonathan Rest, a master's degree candidate who traded 12 years of medical practice for the chance to study directing. Rest's clever set, conceived by assistant scenic designer Jerrod Smith, is a moving, three-dimensional collage of period line drawings, gaslights, a projection screen, a workable cigar machine and a giant thermometer that gauges the sexual tension of the show. The stage lighting seems to respond to physical cues, and a rotating bedroom reveals frequent surprises on the other side.
Armando Rodriguez has a challenging double role as a regal gentleman and a look-alike servant who are constantly being misidentified. Rodriguez is sharp and debonair as the devoted husband at the center of his wife's manipulative ruse. His lowbrow servant shows less personality.
Sian Heder and Beth Whitney play the calculating wife and her best friend, respectively, who set the infidelity trap that eventually snares them both. Heder is a charm to watch, appearing perfectly at ease with her character's comic mood swings.
At the crux of Feydeau's story, the key complication is in the cleft palate of a subservient relative of the bourgeois couple. Joshua Pohja masters a defective speech pattern so well that he's mostly understood by the audience, if not by the play's other characters. Pohja generates some of the funniest scenes with under-his-affected-breath remarks aimed at those who insult him and, later, with his eloquent oratory when the impediment is temporarily corrected.
As always at CMU performances, some supporting actors give standout performances. Lea Coco has a hilarious bit as a half-clothed Scotsman with an insatiable libido. Stacey Swift is impeccable as the hotel manager's confused wife, and Arik Luck and Gigi DeLizza make a fun butler-servant, husband-wife pair.
Feydeau writes that the national disease of France is jealousy. Rest and the CMU cast offer a temporary respite from the American condition of overzealous political correctness.
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Where: Kresge Theatre, Carnegie Mellon, Oakland