The city’s oldest theatre group, Bangalore Little Theatre (BLT) has maintained high standards in their productions. Their Summer Project On Theatre (SPOT) programme enters its 32nd production with The Frisky Suspenders . The play is an adaptation of French farcical classic, A Flea in her Ear by Georges Feydeau, and is set in the 1990s. The production has emerged from a partnership between Alliance Francaise and BLT. Abhishek Sundaravadanan, the director, throws light on the production, in an email interview. Excerpts:
Which part of A flea in her ear by Georges Feydeau has been adapted in The Frisky Suspenders? And how?
The play's plot has been retained in its entirety. Though the original was set in the early 1900s, this adaptation is set in the later 90s trying to keep in tune with a more younger audience. We have reduced the duration of the play to a comfortable 90 minutes.
Could you tell us a little about the plot and the characters?
I was quite inspired by a quote by Richard Eyre who had directed the play. To quote him, “If you wanted an example to show to a Martian, then this is the purest,” he says.
“It’s got the classic ingredients of sexual insecurity, lubriciousness and panic, and the elements are so perfectly bound together.” The plot is triggered when a woman suspects her husband of being unfaithful and sets a trap to catch him at it. The plan backfires, embroiling all the characters in the fall-out. Eyre describes it as being “like a stick of toffee: it just accumulates and with every incident that passes the chaos gets thicker and thicker.”’
What made you choose this play?
As a part of our continuing partnership with the Alliance Francaise we do original scripts or adaptations of French playwrights. Having done Moliere, Antigone (Anouilh's existentialist version) and Rhinoceros (Ionesco's theatre of the Absurd) it was time to turn to farce! The play has a plethora of characters that bodes well for a SPOT production.
How did you go about understanding the play with the cast, and create the production?
We took our time and had many intense discussions to ensure that we dug deep into the history of farce. Interestingly, the word itself stems from the French word meaning ‘stuffing,’ or ‘padding’. Farce has been a source of theatrical comedy entertaining audiences for generations.
The first farces were short comic sketches to pad the short breaks in long, often very sombre plays. Towards the end of the 18th century, any piece that closed a play bill was labelled as farce. We then did a lot of research of Feydeau's plays, his life, the turmoils he went through and the time at which he wrote this piece.
What are some of the interesting parts of the play?
At its best, farce can be sublime, the mix of intricate plotting and sheer silliness combining to blissful comic effect. The world of Parisian belle epoque adulterers would catch the funny bone of our audience and to top it the last act reaches a pinnacle of suspense keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. The play mocks the human weakness of jumping to conclusions.
SPOT enters its 32nd production with The Frisky Suspenders. Could you throw some light on what makes SPOT unique?
SPOT in this format to reach 32 productions is in itself a matter of pride for us; that we did something right. SPOT is a workshop modelled after the National Youth Theatre in the UK, but is obviously more limited in its scale. However, the inputs to the summer workshop are of the highest quality, drawing on the best available methodology. It is open to all interested, from age 16 to 60, irrespective of prior experience in, or aptitude for, theatre activity.
The workshop runs for three months and culminates in the annual theatre production. SPOT being BLT's flagship training programme, is more about self discovery and theatre appreciation than regular actor training.
The Frisky Suspenders will be staged at Alliance Francaise from August 26 to August 28 for two shows each day at 3.30 p.m. and 7.30 p.m. Entry is free. First come, first served.
