Play: A Flea In Her Ear
Playwright: Georges Feydeau (translator John Mortimer)
Director: Simon Phillips
Cast: Peter O'Brien, Sally Cooper, Michael Carman, Ernie Gray, Genevieve Picot, Marg Downey, Richard Piper, Robert Grubb, Lewis Fiander, Sioban Tuke, Frank Gallacher, Judith McGrath, Reg Evans, Giordano Gangl, Richard Piper, Sarah Walker, Humphrey Bower
Season and venue: Arts Centre Playhouse to February 4
Synopsis: A rollicking lesson in infidelity
Rating: 3 stars ***
This play offers a fistful of good gags and a large, competent cast who hurl themselves at the light comedy with much energy.
It is the story of society dame, Raymonde Chandebise (Marg Downey) who plots with her friend Lucienne (Genevieve Picot) to determine whether her husband Victor (Richard Piper) is unfaithful.
Lucienne's passionately jealous, gun-wielding Spanish husband Carlos (Lewis Fiander) is soon embroiled in the plot. And Victor's life is rendered a misery by the disciplinarian hotelier (Frank Gallacher) who thinks Victor is his bell boy (everyone else is similarly mistaken - only less violent about it).
Gallacher is brilliant, Piper excellent, Fiander outstanding, Downey and Picot splendid. Yet the production, taken as a whole, somehow fails to really fire.
Designer Tony Tripp's period costumes are bright and the set, a maze of galvanised iron doors and corridors around a large central playing area, with staircases leading up at each end of the Playhouse stage, burgeons with comic possibilities.
Yet perhaps it is the very size of the playing area which prevents the comedy from reaching fever pitch.
Director Simon Phillips has a finely honed comic eye and usually overcomes just about any obstacle. Yet here, despite some nicely choreographed tableauxs and dexterous comic arrangements there is a noticeable absence of bite - particularly in Act 2.
Nonetheless, the cast wring the comic sponge for all its worth - constantly resoaked, as it is, by a giant lineup of excellent cameos, particularly Peter O'Brien as the hapless Camille, a young man whose speech impediment constantly confuses matter even further.
Ernie Gray does a fine job as the drolly debauched Doctor Finache, Giordano Gangl blunders manfully as a confused Prussian, and Robert Grubb works hard at his role as egotistical philanderer.
Sally Cooper and Sioban Tuke as maids, Michael Carman as the butler with ideas above his station and Judith McGrath as the hotelier's crusty wife ensure a strong margin around the central action.
In short, this production is fine holiday fare - and has the depth of resources to undoubtedly improve through its season.
