La Puce à l'oreille ・ Comédie-Française

For her fifth production at the Comédie-Française, Lilo Baur staged, with brio, "La Puce à l’oreille" [A Flea in Her Ear], an extravagant play by Feydeau that had not been programmed in the theatre since 1978.

It brings together all the ingredients that made the reputation of the vaudeville master: burlesque situations and overlapping cases of mistaken identities, with the theme of the lookalike thrown in for good measure.
In 1907, La Puce à l’oreille marked Feydeau’s triumphant return to vaudeville. With its impressive construction and remarkable inventiveness, it is akin to “a fireworks display set off over an anthill” as one contemporary critic described it.

The primary source of the confusion that prevails throughout the play is a package opened “by mistake” by Mr Chandebise’s wife, Raymonde: it contains suspenders sent from the Minet-Galant hotel. Piqued, she convinces herself that her husband is being unfaithful. She asks her friend Lucienne to write a letter to invite her husband to a rendezvous in the same hotel. The accomplice’s plan goes terribly wrong because the letter written in her hand falls into those of her own husband, who in turn thinks he is being cheated on... All the characters end up at Le Minet-Galant where the hotel porter, Poche, is a dead ringer for Raymonde’s husband.

La Puce à l’oreille is the quintessential troupe play, taking the ingenious use of stage resources to new limits with an “emergency staircase” and, most notably, a stratagem to make adulterous couples disappear at the slightest alert.

Premiere 21 September 2019 Salle Richelieu

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