ONCE BITTEN Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond

Artistic director Sam Walters is also staging a very funny French farce. It’s by Alfred Hennequin and Alfred Delacour Hennequin and premiered in Paris in 1875. Hennequin was a master farceur and Feydeau studied his plots and construction to improve his own technique. The high spot is the second act when a frantic lawyer is hiding from his ferocious mother-in-law under a table and pretends to be a barking dog and bites her in order not to be discovered. David Antrobus, a stylish actor, is very amusing and so, too, is Richard Durden as his impecunious uncle who falls instantly asleep whenever he sits down.