Three acts equal one farce
Jeux d’Amour et de Folie
By Georges Feydeau and Sacha Guitry. Until Dec. 3 upstairs at Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley St. 416-534-6604 Théâtre français de Toronto gives light comedy a good name in three splendid divertissements packaged as one show, Jeux d’amour et de folie.
David Danzon, dancer, actor and co- director of Corpus theatre/ dance company, directs the show and acts the part of a bewigged and stockinged town crier and officious master of ceremonies.
Before the curtains part on the scene of Sacha Guitry’s Une paire de gifles
(A Slap in the Face), Danzon appears in costume as a mechanical puppet in a penny arcade, his jaws moving to the recording of an announcement of the plays. By means of such clever stage business, including a musical interlude in which he introduces all four players, Danzon presents his three-one act plays within the framework of stylized French farce.
In Une paire de gifles, Guitry ( 1885- 1957) stretches humour to absurdity. A husband intervenes on a flirtation between his wife and her lover, after overhearing a slap to her face. The play is a sketch, a short exercise in the ludicrous, with the husband counselling his wife and Raval, the lover, on proper comportment, all the while insisting that they could not be lovers. René Lemieux manages to appear both suave and bombastic as the husband, with Stéphanie Broschart as his wife. Manuel Verreydt is the preposterous lover.
In Feydeau’s Feu la mère de Madame ( Madame’s Late Mother), Lemieux takes on an even more ridiculous role as the husband Lucien, who arrives home at 4 a. m. wearing a Louis XIV costume, complete with a long curly wig. Having awakened his wife, Yvonne, after forgetting his key, he tries to persuade her it is only midnight. Karen Racicot plays the wife who is resentful of having her sleep disturbed and even more affronted when she learns what time it is. Broschart is the dumpy Annette, the maid sent to answer repeated knocks at the door.
There is as much physical comedy as verbal wit in this classic from Feydeau ( 1862- 1921). The catastrophe announced by the door knocking — the death of Yvonne’s mother — sends the quarrelling spouses into a fresh direction. The humour grows darker as a valet (Verreydt) explains that the mother was not sleeping alone at the time of her death. Yet Madame’s mother is a widow.
Broschart plays the stenographer called in to type a letter for a travelling businessman ( Verreydt) in Une lettre bien tapée or AWell Typed Letter.
This Guitry bit has the typist precisely taking down his words on her portable typewriter, as the gentleman dictates. The acting is all in her expression as she taps away, while his dictation wanders from his business intentions to the attractive qualities of the typist. Even if Danzon’s actors don’t equal his nuanced performance and mastery of Le Coq-style physical comedy, they bring the right attitude to three sophisticated plays that can still provoke laughs.