Reviewed 1/23/05
Second only to Moliére as France’s greatest farcical writer, Georges Feydeau is known for his intricately intertwined door-slamming farces full of happy and hilarious coincidences. Marriages are put to the test, and usually survive despite the intended unfaithful spouse’s best intentions. Scripts like A Flea in Her Ear were written during the height of Feydeau’s powers and fame. Later in life, following a divorce and a decline in his health and fortunes, Feydeau’s tone changed. Insouciance was replaced by bitterness. Arizona Theatre Company offers the world premiere of artist-in-residence Geoff Hoyle’s translation and adaptation of five of Feydeau’s final one-acts that he has brought together into a short and slight evening of theatre entitled For Better or Worse. If you go expecting the slamming doors and fast-paced frivolity, you’ll be bitterly disappointed. If you go hoping for black humor and irony aplenty, you’ll be equally disappointed. What you will see if you go is a gifted comedian in Hoyle and several strong actors supporting doing everything they can to be funny without the material to support it. I am an easy laugher. I laugh at pretty much everything. In this shows hour and forty-five minutes (with a fifteen minute intermission), I laughed out loud a total of seven times. Most of the rest of the evening, I watched Hoyle and ensemble go through the paces of David Ira Goldstein’s appropriate blocking and try to invest humor in a lot of repetitions and slight circumstances. When one of the funniest moments involves a seven year old (an under challenged Roman Cratty-Lewis) tying his father’s guest’s (Jarion Monroe) shoes together, you know bottoms of barrels are being scraped.
Set in Paris before WWI, the script follows the life of Bastion
(Hoyle) and Julie Follavoine (Sharon Lockwood) from their marriage through
the incidents surrounding her day of childbirth to a meeting eight years
later in which Bastion, a manufacturer of porcelain, attempts to sell unbreakable
chamber pots to the French army while his wife frets over their child’s
touch of constipation. Tepid comedic situations include things such as Gorgonzola
on spaghetti; slop buckets; stockings; lisping Spaniards; and mother in laws.
The darkness comes only from the fact that there’s no end to the negativity.
I can only recall one moment that I would consider clever. Unfortunately,
it lasts only for about three minutes. In the end, the actors are asked to
make an hour and a half of comedy out of twenty minutes of humor. It’s
a cruel expectation.
It’s especially cruel considering the amount of talent that is wasted here. Goldstein does his usual great job in coming up with bits with which his actors can work. Hoyle does a lot of dancing around and mugging and is funny when the material is there for him. Lockwood’s character is a one-note nag, but she and Hoyle pull off a few enjoyable moments together. Monroe’s Chouilloux has his funny moments, too, though there isn’t a lot of difference between this character and his previous ATC creation in The Underpants. Lynnda Ferguson does double duty as Julie’s mother and Chouilloux unfaithful wife, and while she’s all right in the former, there’s barely anything for her to do in the latter, and she’s listless for it. Amy Resnick plays two different maids, and the material she is given in the second act is atrocious. Richard Trujillo plays the lisping Spaniard, and gets as much humor as he can from this hackneyed role.
There may not be a lot to work with here, but the designers have created some wonderful work. Kent Dorsey’s Parisian living room is well-appointed, makes a clever transformation, and has a funny frame. David Kay Mickelson’s costumes are perfect in period and character. York Kennedy’s lighting captures all moods, although there are several cues that are very obvious and call attention to themselves unnecessarily. Brian Jerome Peterson’s sound design is flawless.
I am very disappointed with this offering. ATC has been so consistently great for so long, when something this underwhelming comes along, it stands out.
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