Director unfazed by farce's difficulty
Theatre Wit artistic director Jeremy Wechsler is serious about comedy. That's a good thing, because the comedy he's currently directing, "Feydeau-Si-Deau" (which opened to the press last night), is notoriously hard to get right.
But that doesn't bother Wechsler. He co-founded the company six years ago specifically to do comedies that were smart but difficult.
"Feydeau-Si-Deau" was written by the late 19th- and early 20th-century French playwright Georges Feydeau. Feydeau reinvented comedy, created a frantic kind of farce that matched the fast pace of modern times. Many of Feydeau's comedies begin with slight misunderstandings and funny coincidences and climax in madcap chases.
"Feydeau's farces are about a pebble becoming a snowball becoming an avalanche by the end," Wechsler says.
What makes Feydeau's plays difficult is that you have to keep it real while things get crazier and crazier.
"The danger of the farce is that people try to make the chaos bigger and bigger," Wechsler says. "But the comedy comes from everyone trying to stop the chaos, trying to control it and failing, not in giving in to it."
"Feydeau-Si-Deau" is about two respectable people, married to other people, who are caught in bed together, and all the craziness that happens next.
"I picked this play because I wanted to do a play by Feydeau," Wechsler says. "I love his plays and I have wanted to do one of his plays ever since we founded Theatre Wit. We are devoted to humor and intelligence. That is our mission.
"I think it is possible to do work that is challenging and funny at the same time," Wechsler continues. "'Feydeau-Si-Deau' is about stripping off all the public posturing in polite society. The play shows it is pointless to pretend that what is happening is not happening. The fact is that infidelity happens all the time. But everyone pretends to be astonished when it happens to them. Feydeau just shows us the truth and makes us laugh as he does it."
"Feydeau-Si-Deau" runs through April 20 at the Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont St., Chicago. For tickets, call (773) 327-5252.