★★★★☆ A riotous farce performed with the perfect mix of precision and sense of the ridiculous.

Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

November 4, 2016

As Chekhov famously said, if there’s a gun on stage, eventually it must be used. Andrew Upton had fun and games with the concept in The Present, his acclaimed adaptation of Chekhov’s Platonov for Sydney Theatre Company, with characters pulling the trigger several times before the dramatic conclusion. In A Flea in Her Ear –  Upton’s latest adaptation for STC – he has a glass of pee sit on a table in the middle of the room for much of Act I. Much like the Chekhovian gun, we know someone will eventually drink it. The question is merely who and when. Once again, Upton gets much comic mileage from the device.

^{Harriet Dyer, Tim Walter, Helen Christinson and Sean O’Shea. Photo by Brett Boardman}

Not that A Flea in Her Ear is remotely Chekhovian. Written by master farceur Georges Feydeau in Paris in 1907, it is one of his most famous plays. Unashamedly frivolous, it is “an exquisite confection of no nutritional value” as Upton puts it in the theatre programme,...