Farce is a comic form uniquely difficult to pull off on stage. From one of its most famous early examples in English theatre – the gulling of Malvolio in Twelfth Night – its success on stage (it’s very seldom particularly entertaining to read) depends entirely on timing, performance and staging. I’ve done everything from wept with laughter at particularly well-handled situations to sat stony-faced at productions that just fail to ignite at all.
Richard Eyre’s new production of Feydeau’s A Flea In Her Ear, thankfully, is closer to the first category than the second. It is helped by Eyre’s fluent and pacey direction and his ensemble, which features the estimable Tom Hollander, fresh from his enormous success in Rev, and a fine supporting cast including the likes of Lisa Dillon, Jonathan Cake and Tim McMullan.
Feydeau’s play might, in the wrong hands, seem dated, but here it managed to amuse and compel throughout. Revolving around a stuffy businessman who’s having difficulties satisfying his wife, who believes he’s an adulterer and constructs an elaborate trap for him as a result, it has a carefully paced first act before a frenetic second act where farcical momentum is at last gathered, as the central characters are all trapped in a hotel of ill repute, ran by a manic Basil Fawlty-esque proprietor with military pretensions.
Hollander, doing manful duty in a dual role as the businessman and his lookalike, a drunken hotel valet, is superb, perhaps predictably, but all the cast are extremely strong. I especially enjoyed Cake’s swaggering would-be Casanova, whose romantic pretensions keep being undone by his incompetence. The Old Vic has been producing some genuinely great work recently, such as the fine revival of Noel Coward’s Design For Living, and I look forward to Anne-Marie Duff in Rattigan’s Cause Celebre and Kevin Spacey in Sam Mendes’ new staging of Richard III next year. This will serve as a marvellous Christmas treat until then.
Until 5 March. Old Vic, The Cut, SE1. www.oldvictheatre.com
