A Flea in Her Ear

A Flea in Her Ear is undoubtedly one of the most popular comedies ever and is a such sooner or later performed in any repertoire theatre. In Nova Gorica, it will be performed to celebrate the centenary of the play (it first opened in 1907). In the era when vaudeville flourished, serious art lovers mostly mocked Feydeau's work, describing it as cheap, petty-bourgeois entertainment - only very few noticed and cherished his "feeling for observation" back then. If we add a perfected structure, rhythm and head-spinning pace to all this, and also the tragic sense of "feeling lost" that Feydeau's characters have - characters whose safe, peaceful, ordered world started collapsing because of one tiny mistake, it turns out that the master of the French boulevard theatre sketched surprisingly current atmosphere of trouble and the imprisonment of an individual in the cruel mechanisms of the modern times. Even the adventures of Mr. Chandebis, who is almost driven mad by the sudden loss of sexual potency, can be described as infinitely funny, yet horrible and scary at the same time.