'What the Butler Saw' and 'A Flea in Her Ear' Reviews: In Search of Great Farce

By Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal

September 14, 2017

A Flea in Her Ear
Spring Green, Wis.

In a small house like the 308-seat F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre, farces can be produced with an up-close economy of dramatic gesture that suits Orton’s work quite well. In a large outdoor amphitheater like American Players Theatre’s 1,088-seat Up-the-Hill Theatre, where Georges Feydeau’s “A Flea in Her Ear” is currently being mounted, bigger and broader comic techniques are needed to engage the audience. David Frank’s APT revival of Feydeau’s 1907 masterpiece about high jinks at what Mr. Frank’s brand-new English-language adaptation dubs the Mount Venus Hotel (Feydeau called it the Hotel Coq d’Or) is nominally set in turn-of-the-century Paris. In practice, it feels more like a jumbo version of the kind of all-American sketch comedy in which Sid Caesar and Carol Burnett used to specialize—and I mean that as a compliment. The doors start slamming with abandon in the second act, and by play’s end you’ll be sore from rib-stretching laughter.

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