Columbia Stages Makes A Sweet Francaise Season Debut

The absence of arousal can undoubtedly ruin a romantic evening. But when suspicion arises between a couple, that’s when the disastrous fireworks really fly.

Georges Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear takes this inevitably amusing situation and runs with it, resulting in a turn-of-the-century farce in the Wildean spirit. The play chronicles the escapades of a charismatic, yet idiosyncratic, group of wealthy French 30-somethings­—and, of course, their servants—as they endure the miscommunications, misunderstandings, and mistaken identities inherent to the romantic farce genre.

Despite these common ingredients, the play successfully avoids falling into a formulaic trap. The intensely choreographed body language of the actors’ consistently ambiguous sexual innuendo stresses the modernity of this production of the play, which was written and is set in 1907 Paris. In this respect, the artistic decisions of director Nadia Foskolou reinvent the social dynamic of the play, preserving its relevance and modernity exactly 100 years after the date it was written.

A Flea in Her Ear is Foskolou’s thesis production and the culmination of her studies in the graduate directing program of the Columbia University School of the Arts. It also marks the beginning of a new season for Columbia Stages, which serves as a showcase for the work of graduate students in the theater department.

Appropriately then, A Flea in Her Ear offers its own commentary on the nature of theater throughout the production. Raymonde (Julianna Bloodgood) and Lucienne (Tania Molina), the two central female figures, instigate what becomes the central conflict of the drama by writing a false love letter. They choose this course of action because they claim that they have seen it work in theater. In the same vein, there is constant ambiguity as to whether the actors are the objects of the audience’s gaze or vice versa. While the play is undoubtedly a Victorian comedy of manners, it addresses the very nature of performance on a much subtler, more intellectual level.

Overall, the play prides itself in being a true product of the Belle Époque. It alternates between being overtly risque and as dignified as a Jane Austen comedy of manners.
There are, however, moments at the height of the conflict in which the momentum seems a bit out of control and dialogue is absorbed by hysteria. In these few situations, Dr. Finache (Andrew Dahl) and Victor-Emmanuel Chandebise (Daniel Damiano) stand out in their ability to immediately take command of the stage and restore wit and reason to mayhem, even in a farcical frenzy where rules and manners do not exist. Their presence alone seems to guarantee some semblance of organization among the chaos.

Ultimately, the play achieves the expected return to harmony and manners that solidifies its status as a romantic comedy, and it rebukes those of us who are overwhelmed by the confusion. While the initial “little problem”—as Raymonde calls her husband’s fidelity predicament—remains unsolved, Feydeau, Foskolou, and the cast assure us that we have every reason to hope for the best.