A Flea in Her Ear

Casting directors are woefully underappreciated. It’s only when all the actors snap together like Legos—as they do here in Griffin’s zesty staging—that their importance becomes clear. So give casting directors Bob Mason and Laura Stanczyk their due. But, man, give them all their due. In Ives’s soufflé-light version of Feydeau’s classic farce, Raymonde (Linda Hart) suspects her husband, Victor, of cheating. Her folly sets off a chain of letters misread and identities mistaken, sending the respectable types to the deliciously unrespectable Frisky Puss Hotel, where the bellboy’s a dead ringer for Victor (Rick Hall brilliantly plays both). Every actor shines, but two downright radiate: Watch Ora Jones’s arresting aplomb, then listen as Rick Boynton, playing Camille, who cannot utter a single consonant, pronounces the name Don Carlos Homenides de Histangua. Boynton’s mush-mouthed turn is a comic jewel.

The pleasure of David Ives’s crisp, delightfully ridiculous translation lies less in out-loud laughs than in its clockwork precision. Griffin, with his uncanny sense of farcical timing, is just the director to grease the cogs. The monotonous second act at the Frisky Puss does hit occasional lulls—despite Daniel Ostling’s eye-candy design. Yet our satisfaction when all is suddenly resolved borders on the giddy. There isn’t much substance beneath the froth, but Griffin offers something far rarer than a thematic mission: an unadulterated love of theater brimming at every moment—and every time the actors spin Kathy Scambiatterra around by pushing her Madonna–meets–Nurse Diesel cone-shaped bra.—Novid Parsi