About the Play:

Georges Feydeau was the greatest of a great age of French farceurs and the first to enter the modern repertory. Of the more than 40 plays Georges Feydeau wrote, over a third were one-acts. In the volume Feydeau, First to Last, Professor Norman R. Shapiro has selected and translated eight of these one-act plays, among them Georges Feydeau's first and last works. These plays are regularly performed in college theatre productions as a showcase of student talent. Includes:

• Ladies' Man: Young woman gives advice about men to another young woman. While waiting for guests to arrive at her elegant soiree, worldly wise Angelique learns she and her naive young cousin are both expecting to marry the same man, an unprincipled cad with plans of his own. This sentimental salon duologue presents a side of Feydeau not usually seen in his later farces. (Cast: 2 female)
• Wooed and Viewed: Husband alone while his wife visits her mother. Hector, a lawyer who is struggling with the problem of an excessively jealous wife, is given a new perspective when a young woman knocks on his door and requests that he make love to her in front of her jealous husband. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)
• Romance in A Flat: Parisian society lady meets her rather odd new piano teacher. When proper city girl meets lusty country boy, she thinks he's her new piano teacher, and he thinks she's asking for another kind of tutelage. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)
• In Fit to Be Tried, or, Stepbrothers in Crime, there's a murderer on the loose! A mysterious suitor fitting the newspaper's description appears at the home of the great Parisian actress Pepita Passionelle. Can she prove the murderer's identity amidst the watchful eye of her husband and the arrival of her secret lover? (Cast: 2 female, 6 male)
• Mixed Doubles: Madness ensues when Pompe-Nicole and Bordeleau arrive at Chez Dominique, where they encounter an overly-friendly maitre d' and his wife. But are their society ladies really who they appear to be? Separate, clandestine dining trysts turn into zany, mixed-up adventures of mistaken identities and romantic debauchery in Mixed Doubles. (Cast: 3 female, 3 male)
• The Boor Hug profiles scheming bachelor Casimir Ferret, who hires what he believes to be a civil and obedient servant. Instead, he gets the bumbling Flugel, a hearty halfwit from the country who seems to be the antithesis of etiquette and refinement. Hilarity ensues as Casimir attempts to cover Flugel's many ghastly social faux pas, to restore his gleaming reputation in the eyes of his many women. (Cast: 2 female, 2 male)
• Caught with His Trance Down: A lazy servant discovers the art of hypnosis and tricks his master into doing all the chores. Antics get out of hand as he turns his master into a monkey to ward off a fiancé who is about to get in the way. (Cast: 2 female, 4 male)
• Tooth and Consequences, or, Hortense Said: "No Skin Off My Ass!": The irascible Marcelle, shrewish wife of dentist Follbraquet, has – with customary lack of tact – chosen his office hours to engage in a bizarre dispute with the maid, Hortense who is simple of mind and straightforward of speech but clever enough to wheedle the hapless husband to her side. Little by little the tension mounts, as Follbraguet tries as Follbraguet tries vainly to treat his patients in the midst. (Cast: 4 female, 5 male)

About the Playwright:

Georges Feydeau (1862-1921) was a French playwright of the era known as the Belle Époque. He is remembered for his many lively farces, one of the favourites of which is Hotel Paradiso. He wrote over sixty plays and was a forerunner of absurdist theatre.

Norman R. Shapiro (1930-2020) was a professor of Romance languages and literature at Wesleyan University and a renowned translator of French plays, poetry, and literature. His translations of Feydeau, Labiche, and other French comic playwrights have been performed in the United States and throughout the English-speaking world. In April 2010 he was named Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an honour bestowed by the Minister of Culture and Communication of the French government.