When home to the National Theatre, the Old Vic had one of its greatest triumphs with Jacques Charon’s production of Feydeau’s Parisian farce in which M Chandebise’s impotence provokes a series of misunderstandings, escalating into a pile up of bodies in the Hotel Coq d’Or. Director Richard Eyre uses the same inventive translation by John Mortimer in this impeccably cast production in which Tom Hollander plays both the highly respectable Chandebise, and his body double, Poche, the enthusiastic drinker and porter at the hotel.
Chandebise’s puppet-like wife (Lisa Dillon) suspects her husband is playing away and contrives a honey trap to catch him. Her friend, Lucienne, writes the tempting billet-doux, which is naturally seen by her insanely jealous Spanish husband who recognises the writing and jumps to the wrong conclusion. Some of the most farcical scenes involve incomprehensible exchanges between John Marquez’s violent Spaniard and Freddie Fox’s delicious clerk, Camille, whose speech is marred by a cleft palate.
Mortimer declared that the actors ‘must remember their lines and bump into the furniture’. The production could be more physical but it has the great advantage of starting in some kind of reality before the madness takes over and all dignity is lost.
Hollander, in particular, suggests that the stiff-necked Chandebise is a man of low self-esteem, which makes some sense of the fact that he could be taken for a porter and given a good kicking by Lloyd Hutchinson’s hotel proprietor. It’s a beating that Poche usually enjoys.
The pleasure comes from the fact that you are constantly expecting Chandebise and Poche to bump into each while also knowing that such a thing is impossible. Eyre’s frenetic, precise production is a delight, provoking constant chuckles without ever, in preview at least, quite reaching the peak of hysteria.