Book Report: A Flea in her Ear

And, as mentioned before, I read A Flea in Her Ear, to see if it would be a good idea to stage.

Enh.

I read the John Mortimer adaptation; perhaps one of the others is funnier. I doubt it, somehow. Some of the individual lines and double-entendres are funny enough. The main thing, though, is the plot and its twists, which just don’t seem very funny to me. They’re OK, I just wasn’t delighted.

You see, there’s the man, and he’s been having trouble performing with his wife, if you know what I mean, so she becomes convinced that he is sleeping with somebody else, which annoys her, because she’s been thinking of having an affair herself, and then there’s his nephew with the speech impediment, and his servant and the servant’s wife (and the nephew), and there’s the wife’s friend, and the wife’s friend’s Crazy Spanish Huthband, and there’s the wife’s would-be lover, and there’s the doctor, and of course there’s the brothel-keeper’s drunken porter, who looks like the fellow, you know, the one we started with. Because, um, because otherwise we wouldn’t have the mistaken-identity bit, would we?

In 1966, by the way, Albert Finney was the fellow and his double; Geraldine McEwan was the wife, and Edward Hardwicke the nephew. Oh, and the head of the production company gave himself a walk-on part as a servant, the obnoxious git, which led to Graham Chapman’s masterful O’Toole, butler to the brothers Montgolfier. Now there was acting.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.