FEYDEAU DOUBLE BILL
Madame's Late Mother and AHouse Bath
"Echange have done a service making those plays available in English, reminding how Feydeau could illuminate human absurdity" Reviewsgate - July 2009
Echange Theatre has retranslated for the first time in thirty years "Un Bain de Menage" an "Madame's Late Mother" by Georges Feydeau, Two classic French bedroom farces by the absolute genius of Comedy!
Those NEW Translations by Echange Theatre are a British Premiere !
Madame's Late Mother Directed by Samuel Miller
A House Bath directed by Gael Colin
The 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th of July 2009.
TABARD THEATRE 2 Bath Road
London
W4 1LW
Box Office: 08448 472 264
Madame's Late Mother: At 4 O’clock in the morning. A row: she wants to sleep, he comes back from a party (Dressed as Louis the XIVth !) Suddenly the doorbell rings...
A House Bath: At night, Madame wants to have a bath, being prepared with much attention by the maid. When Madame changes her mind, the maid decides she might as well have one when suddenly Monsieur comes back...
Two classics of French comedy based on the simplest misunderstanding.
Georges Feydeau is the illegitimate child of Napoléon III and an actress but was educated by the painter Feydeau. Very young, he neglected school for theatre. Inspired by Maxim’s, Cancan, La Belle Epoque, he wrote some vaudeville masterpiece such as A Flea in Her Ear and Sauce for the Goose mocking the bourgeoisie. Georges Feydeau made France laugh through his vaudevillian farces at the dawn of the First World War and, in the process, dominated the genre. Some have seen in Feydeau a precursor of Dadaism, surrealism, and the absurd. Despite being a phenomenally successful playwright, his propensity for high living (he had a table permanently reserved for him at Maxim's), gambling and the failure of his marriage were to lead to financial difficulties. During the winter of 1918 Feydeau contracted syphilis and slowly descended into madness in the remaining years of his life. He died the 5th of June 1921 and is buried in Montmartre. In 1941, Madame’s Late Mother was his first play to enter the “repertoire”.jpg)
Director’s Notes
Samuel Miller on “Madame’s Late Mother”: When asked to direct a Feydeau farce, I thought "sounds like a lot of fun". I was right – but since, I have discovered that farce is more challenging to direct than any other style I've worked on. It demands a level of exactitude that is almost military, and could be described as a 40-minute choreographed piece. Every nuance is essential. Feydeau had an intimate understanding of rhythm, and the beats are written into the play. To deviate from them is to stray off the path.
Another discovery was how close the comedy is to tragedy. “Madame's Late Mother” tells the tale of a couple in crisis, rocked by a death in the family. It is a testament to the genius of Feydeau that this grim set-up produces a hilarious play, and we quickly realised that paradoxically, the best way to bring out the humour was to focus on the tragic situation. I hope that you have as much fun watching “Madame’s Late Mother” as we have had working on it.
Samuel Miller, July 2008.
Gaël Colin on “A House Bath”: Comedy is probably the hardest type of theatre for an actor to perform and especially Feydeau. It is all about rhythm and precision. The characters there are almost stock characters, like the ones used in Commedia Dell Arte or in Moliere: the maid, the young Arlequin, the pretty young lady and Pantalone the husband. The comedy is in the situations, it was like early sit-com!
Feydeau is considered as the master of the genre and even if “ A House Bath is one of his early short plays, there is already all the ingredients of his most famous ones. He gives us there a great toy to play with: a bath and some water. Like children, we are going to make the most of it!
Gael Colin, July 2009.