Théâtre français de Toronto (TfT) / Feu Monsieur Feydeau!, written and directed by Sébastien Bertrand, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, closes Nov. 3. Tickets here.
You have to give brownie points to ambitious playwright Sébastien Bertrand for taking on the French classics in his own unique way.
Last season, Toronto French Theatre mounted Bertrand’s very successful Les Filles du roi, which incorporated text pirated from the plays of Molière to illustrate the life stories of the young women on their way to New France. The focus of Bertrand’s latest original production for TfT, Feu Monsieur Feydeau!, is the great farceur, Georges Feydeau (1862-1921).
Alas, Feu Monsieur Feydeau! doesn’t quite know what it wants to because it’s trying to keep so many balls in the air. In fact, the play’s personality is decidedly split. Aspiring, yes, even clever, yes, but the sum of its parts doesn’t quite equal the whole.
In Les Filles du roi, Bertrand succeeded in capturing the spirit of Molière’s biting comedies, so in Feu Monsieur Feydeau! we are expecting farce, and the play does delivers the tropes of vaudeville (as the French call it), such as mistaken identities and physical comedy rooted in satire.
The problem is, the farcical elements are at odds with the storyline, which is decidedly dark.
The Story
Bertrand has set the play in the last year of Feydeau’s life when he was suffering from dementia caused by tertiary siphyllis (or the French disease as the play politely terms it), and is confined to the sanitarium at Rueil-Malmaison.
There Feydeau (Mathieu Bourassa) is surrounded by eccentric characters such as fellow patient M. Jean (Adam Paolozza) who has chronic amnesia, and believe it or not, the martini-swilling, Nobel-prize winning scientist Marie Curie (Patricia Marceau), who claims to be on a rest cure. Then there is the Doctor (François Macdonald) who is having a homosexual relationship with the handyman Lucien (Mickaël Girouard).
Into this chaotic milieu comes Feydeau’s estranged and cash-starved wife, Marie-Anne (Stéphanie Broschart), who has been mistakenly told that the playwright is dead. Although divorced in 1916, she comes rushing to the sanitarium in the hopes of finding a will which grants her an inheritance.
Bertrand has also provided opportunities for Feydeau to spout his cynical philosophy about the pitfalls of marriage, which are at the heart of his farces, while Mme. Curie gets to rhapsodize about her beloved dead husband Pierre, and her thoughts on the afterlife.
The Result
The result is the silly mixed with the serious, and the two just don’t gel together. Mme. Feydeau becoming engaged to M. Jean because she thinks he’s a rich doctor, and Lucien thinking that his lover the doctor is engaged to Mme. Feydeau, skip along the surface, interrupted by very serious moments. As a result, the various bouts of physical comedy seem forced, even gerrymandered into the play.
I do understand Bertrand’s daring approach — make Feydeau a character in his own farce. It’s a very original idea, but setting the play in the last year of the playwright’s life is not particularly funny. It leaves a bitter taste, compounded by Mme. Curie’s sad contribution. Pratfalls definitely seem out of place.
On a more positive note, the production looks good thanks to Glenn Davidson’s lighting, sets and props. The pretty room he created could be right at home in a posh sanitarium. Michelle Tracey’s costumes, particularly her gorgeous 1920s pink outfit for Mme. Feydeau, really sets period, as does the Keith Thomas’ tuneful Jazz Age score.
Final Thoughts
One certainly can’t fault Bertrand’s fast-paced direction, and the talented cast gives their all in terms of character.
Sometimes, however, an audacious idea fails to take flight.
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