The first time I saw Georges Feydeau’s Sauce for the Goose, it was called Le Dindon and it was performed in French by the Comédie Française. I thought it was the funniest farce I had ever seen. The second act, set in a hotel bedroom, was hilarious. It still is. But then Feydeau (1862-1921), synonymous with Paris and La Belle Époque, is by common consent theatre’s greatest farceur. He wrote some forty plays, satires on the petite bourgeoisie, in which he described, with clinical detachment and mathematical precision, their frantic efforts to avoid scandal and disentangle themselves from the ridiculous disasters their sordid affairs and lies had landed them in. Le Dindon, premiered in 1889, is one of his very best.
A very respectable wife is pursued by a married man; but she is prepared to commit adultery only if her husband should prove unfaithful. The married man goes to the hotel where he knows her husband is going to have a rendez-vous with his German mistress and he places two electric bells under the mattress with the intention of catching the couple in flagrante delicto. The bells will ring the moment anybody lies on the bed. It sounds like a good idea. The only trouble is that hotel room has been double-booked by an elderly couple, a major and his deaf wife. I need say no more.
Sam Walters’s production has the advantage of two excellent farceurs in David Antrobus and Stuart Fox. Peter Meyer’s translation also has some clever word-play with “dog” and “hound” amusingly showing that they are not always interchangeable.