Polly Warfield - July 26, 2001

CRITIC'S PICK

Something extraordinary is going on at Stages Theater Center. Unattended by any hoopla or fanfare, it seems to be a well-kept secret. Director Gulu Monteiro of Rio de Janeiro mounts a lively version of "A Flea in Her Ear" in which master farceur Georges Feydeau's Parisian panache, je ne sais quoi, and ooh-la-la get a shot of Brazilian beat and brio. It's a volatile mix. Nonstop action begins when married lady Monique gets a flea in her ear and bee in her bonnet, wrongly suspects her husband, Chandel, of infidelity, and sets a crafty plot to catch him at it. The ensuing whirligig of misapprehension and much ado about nothing draws everyone in before the snarl is untangled.

Guide and mentor Gulu Monteiro, who heads his own commedia-styled theater of gesture, mask, and movement in Rio, creates a disciplined ensemble from assembled actors who earn enthusiastic applause for the hard work, commitment, and artistry with which they adapted to his distinctive technique. Seven actors portray two or three times that many characters, aided by a menagerie of masks in bird or animal mod - pig, sparrow, owl, camel - which reveal as they conceal, protect as they liberate the actor within.

There are two woman in the cast but seem to be more. Both delicately fashioned and reed-slender, they are Ann Michele Fitzgerald's blond Antoinette and Parisian actress Clara Bellar (seen as the French nanny robot in Steven Spielberg film A.I.) as her brunette friend Monique. The uncanny alacrity with which they doff fancy hats and fringed shawls and don masks, aprons and babushkas to become silly simpering servitors is exceeded only by Albie Selznick's split-second exits as Chandel and entrances as loutish hotel porter Poche. Upper-class Chandel and lowly Poche share such uncanny physical resemblance they confuse even themselves.

Jay Ferguson's bumbling servant Camille speaks gibberish; no one can understand him. Forget sensitivity - this is flat-out farce. Jamie Donovan's Tournel is a dandy who fancies himself a ladies' man. Splendidly fiery Charles Fathy is Lucienne's irrationally jealous Spanish husband. Herb Mendelsohn strikes a note of mild-mannered sanity as Chandel's friend Dr. Finache. All also essay various lackeys and underlings, and employ a stylized mode of locomotion combining scurry, scuttle, scamper, and crouch that speeds the action.

Gulu's emphasis is on actor and style, not so much on mise en sc�ne. The play whizzes by, both indoors and out, without intermission. When a helicopter whirrs overhead, quick-witted Bellar incorporates it into her dialogue. To quote one of the characters: "It's not a question of quality, there's plenty of that. It's a question of idiosyncrasy." There's plenty of both, plus admirable actors' art, in Brazilian Gulu's French farce - fast, frenzied and funny.