After seeing the Rep’s A Flea in Her Ear, the critic is buzzed

At the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s dizzy, lavish A Flea in
Her Ear, there’s only one problem most audience members might
face: They might be glutted.

So generous is Georges Feydeau’s 1907 farce (and David Ives’ new
adaptation) with double-entendres and door slams and escalating
complications, and so frequent and hearty are the laughs elicited as
director Gary Griffin and his company work through the elegant knots of
Feydeau’s masterwork, that I greeted the second intermission with a bit
of enthusiasm. After the hurly-burly of the second act, here was a
chance to savor the pleasures that had been breezing by so quickly.

The story turns on a romantic trap, a proposed assignation in a
letter penned by a pair of bourgeois mesdames as a test for a husband
they think has been unfaithful. If he shows up at the Frisky Puss
Hotel, he’s a cad; if he doesn’t, he’s a saint.

Wife Raymonde, bristling with horny ennui as played by the marvelous
Carol Halstead, suspects her man partly because of some errant
suspenders — but mostly because lately he’s been impotent.
“This put a flea in my ear, all right,” she says.

That flea stirs chaos of the first order. Once Raymonde’s husband
receives said letter, he gloats about it to his friends, whose vanities
and jealousies set off fleas of their own. Misunderstandings
accumulate, and soon a whole host of couples are off to the Puss,
careering off one another like pinballs. In other shows, this kind of
thing can get headachey, but Griffin’s pace is steady, and his action
is clear. The mounting calamities are unlikely to surprise us, so
Griffin invites the audience to savor their approach, coaxing a rare,
anticipatory laughter. We laugh at the build-up to the next
farcical turn, relishing the mayhem to come — mayhem that, when
it hits, is all the more satisfying for our anticipation.

So, when we learn that the hotel (a plush marvel from scenic
designer Jack Magaw) is outfitted with a spinning bed and a secret
door, or when we discover that the impotent husband is a dead ringer
for the hotel’s drunken bellboy (both well handled by John Scherer), we
giggle both at the silliness of the conceits and at the havoc they’ll
stir.

A farce’s setup can often be tedious, sometimes like waiting for
water to boil, but Griffin’s scenes engage even when the water is cold.
The opening is highlighted by Jonathan Root as a crowd-favorite fool
who erupts in dazzling gibberish, by Mark Robbins as a dirty-minded
doctor in a ridiculous pince-nez, and by the delicious Anne L. Nathan
as a wife who’s as oversexed as Raymonde is the opposite.

The second act does involve some minor labor, but its payoff —
Scott Cordes booting the bottom of a wealthy monsieur — is richer
still. Throughout, costume designer Mara Blumenfeld’s gowns and harlot
getups brighten the already cheery mood.

Griffin directed Ives’ translation for the Chicago Shakespeare
Theater, and he recently helmed The Color Purple on Broadway,
further evidence that the Rep is becoming a national theater that has
the good fortune to draw upon Kansas City talent. Invaluable local
contributions come from sound designer John Story and from actors
Martin Buchanan as a cuckolded valet and Allan Boardman as a withered
old drunk who only turns up where nobody wants him.

This is the finale of artistic director Eric Rosen’s first season,
and while the show’s lightness and spirit differ from most of what he
has mounted, its momentousness feels of a piece. For the first time in
recent memory, each Rep production is an event. Better still, each is
extraordinary theater.

Griffin’s production wells with love for theatrical traditions
— the footlights, that second intermission, a sumptuous curtain
that spares us from watching the set dressers. Still, there’s nothing
nostalgic here. Early on, plotting her silly scheme, Halstead’s
Raymonde observes, “It’s the old ploys that work the best.” The
implication is that this bored wife sets the farce in motion, not
because of her uncertainty about her husband’s fidelity but because
setting a farce in motion — well, isn’t setting a farce in motion
enough?

Happily, those old ploys come to life for her and for us. Griffin
and the Rep take on the old as if it were new, with vision and
vitality. In English or French, in 1907 or 2009, A Flea in Her
Ear is the freshest, funniest show around.

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