By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Oo-la-la. Playhouse in the Park is offering up a triple-layer dessert of a French farce these nights, as scrumptious looking as anything in the patisserie window.

The show is Georges Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear, which is exactly what suspicious wife Raymonde (Deanne Lorette) has because she's convinced her husband Victor-Emmanuel (Anderson Matthews) is frequenting the low (and very purple) Hotel Belle Epoque for you-know-what.

Of course he is completely innocent, he's just having, um, performance problems. Flea is all about sex, a pleasant change from the violence on prime-time TV.

One of the great delights of this Flea is the translation by Douglas Johnson, so that it is both frankly French in spirit and modern-sounding to the ears of an American audience a century after its debut.

French farce follows a very specific construction. Act one, set up; act two, comic mayhem; act three, resolve all. There must be many doors for characters to dash through with precision timing, in order to miss or meet each other, always inopportunely.

Mr. Feydeau was adept at piling on bizarre circumstances to the height of the Eiffel Tower.

So, in the first act (feel free to take notes), Raymonde calls in her best friend Lucienne (Andrea Cirie) to trap her straying husband by writing him a torrid mash note inviting him for an assignation.

It's Victor-Emmanuel's nephew Camille (Jeffries Thaiss) who is doing all the dangling and diddling, in particular with the maid (Patricia Dalen), married to the unctuous butler (David Diaz).

Compounding the confusion, Camille has a speech impediment, so nobody can understand anything he says. Also compounding the confusion, Lucienne's insanely jealous husband Carlos (Thom Rivera) comes upon the letter and decides to kill several people. Carlos, being a Spaniard, speaks a sort of fractured English further tortured by a silly accent.

The couple's gilt salon is further populated by family doctor (Paul DeBoy) and Victor-Emmanuel's best friend Tournel (R. Ward Duffy) who has eyes for Raymonde.

You will not be surprised to hear that in the second act they all find their way to the Belle Epoque, a pink on purple (or maybe purple on pink) mad romp of a place designed by James Wolk. Not only are there five doors, there are stairways leading to upper and lower levels and a secret panel. There's also a very special room with a revolving bed.

As I said, mayhem. Costume designer Elizabeth Covey helps us along by pairing couples - all stylish Parisians - in giddily coordinated crayon colors throughout.

In act two, hotel owners Thomas Carson and Lisa McMillan, a lusting German patron (T. Doyle Leverett), and Victor-Emmanuel's look-alike, boozing hall porter Poche, are added to the mix to send everyone into higher hysterics.

This is an ensemble piece and the entire cast does admirable work. Mr. Thaiss, Mr. Rivera and Mr. Diaz, who all enjoy showy comic roles, are smashing.

Director John Going puts the actors through their paces, riding the rhythms of the action with assurance.

My only wish for Flea would be to see a true farceur in the role of Victor-Emmanuel/Poche. Mr. Matthews is perfectly capable, but he is not positioned as an axis on which the endless whirl can revolve.

Flea works best when a performer with great ability at physical comedy and an indelible stage presence is given rein to cut loose. Voila, theatergoers fall out of their seats. It's badly needed for the third act, which is like the final yards of a thrill ride as it coasts home.

A Flea in Her Ear, through Nov. 22, Playhouse in the Park, 421-3888.