Georges Feydeau: The Father of Modern Farce
Marc Camoletti’s DON’T DRESS FOR DINNER is descended from master French farceur Georges Feydeau.
Onstage at Lantern Theater Company May 24 to June 24, 2018, Don’t Dress for Dinner is a French play, translated and adapted by British writer. Originally called Pyjama pour six (Pajamas for Six), Marc Camoletti’s farce was a huge success in Paris, then in London under the new title, and is now making its Philadelphia premiere at the Lantern. Camoletti’s play is part of the long tradition of French farce, and is especially indebted to master French farceur Georges Feydeau.
Feydeau was born in Paris in 1862, the son of a novelist who expected his child to become a writer. The younger Feydeau obliged, writing his first comic monologue at the age of 20. Critically acclaimed but little seen one acts were next, followed by a three-act play called Ladies’ Dressmaker. With this, he had his first major theatrical success at just 24 years old.
Two years later, Feydeau briefly gave up writing in favor of studying the masters who preceded him. He delved into the works of the most important French farceurs, assimilating their tactics and lessons into his own writing. Upon his return to playwriting in 1892, he became one of the most popular playwrights in Paris and saw his work translated and performed across Europe.
Camoletti’s Don’t Dress for Dinner follows in Feydeau’s footsteps in some major ways. Feydeau’s farces often center on unfaithful spouses scrambling to cover their indiscretions and keep their partners in the dark, while deriving much of their comic energy from the meeting of characters better kept apart. Feydeau’s plays have been described as mathematical, geometric, and immaculate in construction; modern farces (including Don’t Dress for Dinner) are also built in this precise and particular way.
Perhaps the best-known example of Feydeau’s enduring brand of farce is A Flea in Her Ear. A wife suspects her husband of philandering, so she cooks up a scheme to lure him to a hotel to prove it. A host of inconvenient characters converge upon the hotel, including friends, lovers, and jealous husbands, leading to a comic frenzy of violence, innuendo, and infidelity before the status quo is restored in the end.
Feydeau’s precision and focus on infidelity and comic violence came from his studies of the past, and are present in the future farces that his own work inspired. Farcical playwrights like Camoletti are not the only writers indebted to Feydeau, however. The irrational, wild places to which Feydeau’s plots travel are considered early entries in the absurdist, surrealist, and Dadaist genres, as his hapless characters struggle against uncompromising, unkind circumstances — often of their own making.
Feydeau wrote upwards of 50 plays before his death in 1921, as the bedroom farce was gaining in international popularity. The innuendo and partner swapping of this subgenre — of which Don’t Dress for Dinner is a part — were familiar to Feydeau, taken the farce to dizzying heights and bringing Parisian, European, and ultimately American audiences along for the ride.
Don’t Dress for Dinner is onstage at the Lantern May 24 through June 24, 2018. Visit our website for tickets and information.
