Un fil à la patte

“There will perhaps remain nothing of my theatre except Madame’s Late Mother, but it would have to be staged at the Comédie-Française”: so dreamed the author for the recognition of his life’s work, but also of a genre, a recognition that came about slowly but surely, thirty-three years after the play was premiered. Ever since it has been unstoppable. Fly in the Ointment triumphed at the Salle Richelieu in 1961 and even became the image of the Troupe abroad during a tour in Europe and the Americas. For Feydeau is about the troupe, requiring a group effort that Jérôme Deschamps describes as giving the “right palette, right colours and right contrasts” to make the clockwork mechanics sing in this partition described by Guitry as follows: “Open up the back of a watch and peer into its inner workings: cogwheels, springs and small thrusters. That is the view of a Feydeau play from the wings. Put the housing back on and turn over the watch and you have a Feydeau play viewed from the audience––the hours pass, naturally, quickly, exquisitely.”