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Feydeau, First to Last: Eight One-Act Comedies
Feydeau was the greatest of a great age of French farceurs and the first to enter the modern repertory. Of the more than 40 plays Feydeau wrote, over a third were one-acts. In this volume, Shapiro has selected and translated eight of these one-act plays, among them Feydeau's first and last works. Ladies' Man • Wooed and Viewed • Romance in A Flat • Fit to Be Tried, or, Stepbrothers in Crime • Mixed Doubles • The Boor Hug • Caught with His Trance Down • Tooth and Consequences, or, Hortense “No Skin Off My Ass!”
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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About the author
Georges Feydeau
260 books15 followersFils d'un romancier, il est le maître du Baudeville.Il porte ce genre mineur à la perfection avec une grande maîtrise technique .
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 14, 2014
I read most of this in a single night as part of a larger farce-reading binge that includes Albert Bermel's historical genre overview, a compilation of Feydeau's full-length works, a pair of anthologies of French farceurs that includes translations of Georges Courteline, Victorien Sardou, Eugène Labiche, and Alfred Jarry, among others, and darned near all of Moliere's output. So I am throwing up a quick post here as a means of digging out from underneath even as I work up my own conclusions (which I hope to use as a review of Bermel's survey*) as to what constitutes farce.
My take on this one-act compilation aligns completely with GR Keith's, and I will only add to it what I wrote him, to wit, that of the one acts here, I thought Par la fenetre (or, "Wooed and Viewed") Feydeau's early one-act about the crazy woman from the apartment across the way seeking to give cause to her husband's (misperceived) petty jealousy was still a pretty funny if boilerplate bedroom farce. Take this short bit of schtick at page 70 -- Emma, the nutty neighbor invading schlemiel Hector's apartment has just thrown open the window and is now trying to get him to stand in front of it (so her husband can better see)...
The two exceptions to Feydeau's parade of prostitutes and shrews would seem to be Les Pavés de l’ours (going as "The Boor Hug" here) and Dormez, je le veux! ("Caught with his Trance Down" here, but I'd have thought more faithfully translated as "Sleep, I command you!"). However, the former simply substitutes coarse stereotyping of foreign domestics for Feydeau's misogynistic foils (that is, the protagonist's amorous adventures are ruined by a hick Jeeves), while the latter uses hypnotism to cast a spell over and thereby abuse its dupes. It's not terribly inventive, and those familiar with 1960's sitcom/1980's filmdom male adolescent fantasies (I Dream of Jeanie? Zapped? Really?) will note certain similarities.
Tooth or Consequences (a pretty odd substitute for Hortense a dit: "Je m'en fous!") was an extremely discomfiting game of uproar (escalating screaming and reciprocal accusations in lieu of slamming doors and confusion). As such, I would think it could be played as either farce/comedy or absurdist drama, but I wasn't a big fan of it on the page, either.
For me, a couple of Feydeau's full plays hit closer to the kind of farce I was expecting. Un purge Bebe ran close kin to the fishwife of "Tooth," only with better slapstick and more obvious gags (mostly resulting from a ceramics manufacturer's vain attempts to impress a vain official dangling a defense contract for "unbreakable" chamber pots). Occupe-toi d'Amélie (which I read as "Keep an Eye on Amelie!") was very Blake Edwards-y (people hiding from one another under beds, bed linens, screens, and curtains, jumping out of windows, etc. all with exquisite choreography and ample justification). Along the same lines, I've heard lots of good things about La Dame de chez Maxim -- though I didn't seek it out, I just recently saw a high school production out in Springfield advertised, so you know it's in circulation -- but have yet to find a copy at my local library. All told, if you haven't given up on Feydeau, perhaps try out one of these?**
Considering French farce as a whole, I confess to being a big Moliere fan. From the 19th century, my favorites remain any libretti that Jacques Offenbach has set to music. From the 20th century... well, the recent past has (fortunately!) not winnowed down all the various farcical offerings from stage, screen, and broadcast to allow any kind of thoroughgoing sample, but...
Oh, alright, I'll confess that after Jean-Paul Sartre and Irish expat Samuel Beckett my taste in turns primarily (entirely?) to farces by native English speakers (I also have a preference for satire, which is not to say that I see firewalls between genres). George Abbott. Woody Allen. Charlie Chaplin. The Coen Brothers. Blake Edwards. Nora Ephron. Larry Gelbart. William Goldsmith. Monty Python (they're all brilliant writers and directors). Harold Ramis. Tom Stoppard. Not a complete list by any means.
* Update - I finally got around to writing up and posting my Bermel review and thoughts on farce. Interested GoodReaders can find it here.
** Second update - Ho, yes! Seek out La Dame de chez Maxim by all means. I just finished reading it, and it's absolutely hilarious. In fact, what are you waiting for? Go and get yourself Kenneth McLeish's quartet of translations right now!
My take on this one-act compilation aligns completely with GR Keith's, and I will only add to it what I wrote him, to wit, that of the one acts here, I thought Par la fenetre (or, "Wooed and Viewed") Feydeau's early one-act about the crazy woman from the apartment across the way seeking to give cause to her husband's (misperceived) petty jealousy was still a pretty funny if boilerplate bedroom farce. Take this short bit of schtick at page 70 -- Emma, the nutty neighbor invading schlemiel Hector's apartment has just thrown open the window and is now trying to get him to stand in front of it (so her husband can better see)...
HECTOR: Whoever heard of anyone eating next to an open window in the middle of February? It's insane! You're insane! This whole damn thing is abso... abso... (He tries to repress a sneeze.) absolutely insane! (He sneezes.) There! I hope you're happy. Now I've got a cold.Good times. Incidentally, it's worth mentioning that Emma's husband once challenged a man to a duel... using hand drills. So there's that "threat" hanging in the air. For me, this is Feydeau at his finest, although if you survey his works as a whole, you'll find much more humor by way of uproar and imbroglio (consider all those cuckolds, pimps, and prostitutes) than misunderstanding, mistaken identity, crossed-purposes, wordplay, and satire.
EMMA: God bless you!
HECTOR (aside): God damn you!
EMMA: Monsieur Bouchard, I would like to point out to you that if you hadn't put up such a silly fuss, we would have been finished long ago.
HECTOR (speaking through his nose): Madame Whoever-you-are, I'd like to point out to you that...(He sneezes.) that...(Sneeze.) that... (Sneeze.) Fine! Now I've really got it!
He places his napkin around his head and knots it under his chin like a kerchief.
The two exceptions to Feydeau's parade of prostitutes and shrews would seem to be Les Pavés de l’ours (going as "The Boor Hug" here) and Dormez, je le veux! ("Caught with his Trance Down" here, but I'd have thought more faithfully translated as "Sleep, I command you!"). However, the former simply substitutes coarse stereotyping of foreign domestics for Feydeau's misogynistic foils (that is, the protagonist's amorous adventures are ruined by a hick Jeeves), while the latter uses hypnotism to cast a spell over and thereby abuse its dupes. It's not terribly inventive, and those familiar with 1960's sitcom/1980's filmdom male adolescent fantasies (I Dream of Jeanie? Zapped? Really?) will note certain similarities.
Tooth or Consequences (a pretty odd substitute for Hortense a dit: "Je m'en fous!") was an extremely discomfiting game of uproar (escalating screaming and reciprocal accusations in lieu of slamming doors and confusion). As such, I would think it could be played as either farce/comedy or absurdist drama, but I wasn't a big fan of it on the page, either.
For me, a couple of Feydeau's full plays hit closer to the kind of farce I was expecting. Un purge Bebe ran close kin to the fishwife of "Tooth," only with better slapstick and more obvious gags (mostly resulting from a ceramics manufacturer's vain attempts to impress a vain official dangling a defense contract for "unbreakable" chamber pots). Occupe-toi d'Amélie (which I read as "Keep an Eye on Amelie!") was very Blake Edwards-y (people hiding from one another under beds, bed linens, screens, and curtains, jumping out of windows, etc. all with exquisite choreography and ample justification). Along the same lines, I've heard lots of good things about La Dame de chez Maxim -- though I didn't seek it out, I just recently saw a high school production out in Springfield advertised, so you know it's in circulation -- but have yet to find a copy at my local library. All told, if you haven't given up on Feydeau, perhaps try out one of these?**
Considering French farce as a whole, I confess to being a big Moliere fan. From the 19th century, my favorites remain any libretti that Jacques Offenbach has set to music. From the 20th century... well, the recent past has (fortunately!) not winnowed down all the various farcical offerings from stage, screen, and broadcast to allow any kind of thoroughgoing sample, but...
Oh, alright, I'll confess that after Jean-Paul Sartre and Irish expat Samuel Beckett my taste in turns primarily (entirely?) to farces by native English speakers (I also have a preference for satire, which is not to say that I see firewalls between genres). George Abbott. Woody Allen. Charlie Chaplin. The Coen Brothers. Blake Edwards. Nora Ephron. Larry Gelbart. William Goldsmith. Monty Python (they're all brilliant writers and directors). Harold Ramis. Tom Stoppard. Not a complete list by any means.
* Update - I finally got around to writing up and posting my Bermel review and thoughts on farce. Interested GoodReaders can find it here.
** Second update - Ho, yes! Seek out La Dame de chez Maxim by all means. I just finished reading it, and it's absolutely hilarious. In fact, what are you waiting for? Go and get yourself Kenneth McLeish's quartet of translations right now!
May 21, 2015
Georges Feydeau is famous for his farces, but having read this book, I'm not sure what I would call a farce. To me, these seemed like adult-themed sitcoms. There is an absurdity to them, but not much more than I Love Lucy or Three’s Company. In my mind, farce is a bit more extreme. (Granted, the wordplay is lost in translation.)
I only read two of the plays, Mixed Doubles and Tooth or Consequences. They presented amusing situations, but the characters are not very likeable. There definitely seems to be a misogynistic tendency in these works. There is a darkness underlying these plays.
I’m not familiar with Feydeau’s longer plays (like A Flea in Her Ear), but I didn’t think these were funny or compelling. I didn’t read the whole book, but I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone other than avid Feydeau enthusiast.
I only read two of the plays, Mixed Doubles and Tooth or Consequences. They presented amusing situations, but the characters are not very likeable. There definitely seems to be a misogynistic tendency in these works. There is a darkness underlying these plays.
I’m not familiar with Feydeau’s longer plays (like A Flea in Her Ear), but I didn’t think these were funny or compelling. I didn’t read the whole book, but I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone other than avid Feydeau enthusiast.
April 28, 2015
"Wooed and Viewed" and "Romance in A Flat" are simply wonderfully written, and has one of greatest comedic characters ever (Emma)!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews