Director Gets Serious About His Treatment of Farce by Feydeau

SAN DIEGO —  Georges Feydeau made his reputation by being funny, which is probably why he is rarely taken seriously.

That light attitude toward Feydeau is one that Stan Wojewodski Jr. has striven to correct in his direction of the charming Feydeau farce, “There’s One in Every Marriage,” playing at the Old Globe through Sept. 20.

While some people don’t take farce seriously, Wojewodski said, he takes it “deadly” seriously.

“You really have to. Or it becomes the worst kind of situation comedy,” he said. “It cheats in search of a laugh instead of distilling what that issue is in the most extreme way so that the laugh is released purely.”

This, of course, doesn’t stop Wojewodski’s interpretation of this 19th-Century classic from being funny.

It is just that in his version the human issues shine through the mixed messages, intentions and assignations.

Another thing Feydeau is famous for is the elaborate contrivances of his plots. If anything, he outdoes himself in this tale of Lucienne and Vatelin, the loving husband and wife whose marriage is threatened by a variety of suitors competing for their affections. Even when the explanation is finished, one is left with a sense that the twists and turns depend on such a complex series of deceptions that, as Wojewodski said, “if one person told the truth or could be brave, the plot would end.”

But they don’t--at least not until the end of the third act.

One of the reasons the plot is as unnatural as it is, Wojewodski suggested, is “to produce extreme behavior” that shows “what happens to the marriage after pressures are brought to bear.”

“If you take the issues of farce and look at them from the other end of the telescope, it (farce) becomes (Swedish dramatist Johann) Strindberg. People who are trying to seduce others from healthy marriages . . . (illustrate) the worst in human beings. . . . Great farce has to be motivated by the same pain that tragedy is motivated by. . . . But it comes from a comic perspective where we release through our laughter rather than from our tears.”

This is not far from what Feydeau himself had to say about the matter:

“To make a good vaudeville, you take the most tragic situation possible . . . and you try to bring out its burlesque side. There is no human drama which does not offer at least several comic aspects. That is why authors you call comic are always sad: they think ‘sad’ first.”

Looking for something new in a work such as this is typical of Wojewodski’s approach to theater. As the artistic director of Baltimore’s Center Stage, he has been responsible for 11 world premieres, two American premieres and three premiere translations in the past five seasons.

Although he also does the classics, he reads them as he would read new works. That, for him, is part of the joy of directing.

“I get to collaborate with exciting artists, the best thinkers not only of our generation, but of every age. I get to collaborate with Shakespeare, with Ibsen . . . and with Georges Feydeau.”

One of the things that made Feydeau a special challenge for him was how to make this work--generally unfamiliar to and unappreciated by American audiences (Feydeau is still very popular in France)--more accessible.

With the help of set designer Douglas W. Schmidt, he modernized the sets, partially liberating them from the literal limitations of realistic drawing rooms.

In retrospect, if he could do it again, he would simplify them even more.

He and Schmidt added a giant iris that not only stands as an emblem of the age in which Feydeau wrote, but also creates a symbolic “Little Shop of Horrors” effect that intimates “feed me” in an erotic key.

The lighting on the flower makes it blanch or loom lasciviously, depending on the nature of the action.

But mostly, Wojewodski is “fascinated by the content of the play.” The married couple at the story’s center care for each other. Absurd as they and the things around them often are, the audience can really root for them.

That’s the other thing that makes all the catastrophes funny: “Comedy is about survival. You laugh because you know someone is going to live,” he said.

“Feydeau was an extraordinary observer of life. . . . There are some theories among scholars that (he) is second only to Moliere in his comic gift to French theater.

“That reputation is long in coming.”

To others, maybe. To Wojewodski, that reputation is already clearly established.