Once Bitten

Horrendous mothers-in-law are traditionally associated with British rather than French farce but there’s a ferocious, if chic, one in Alfred Hennequin and Alfred Delacour’s 1875 ‘Once Bitten’, a precursor to Feydeau’s ‘A Flea in Her Ear’.

David Antrobus’s timid lawyer, Fauvinard, blames his wife’s mother, Madame Laiguisier (Briony McRoberts), for driving him out of the house and into the arms of his mistress. Once in her boudoir matters inevitably get fiendishly complicated. Slamming doors are an essential part of the action but director Sam Walters is not daunted by the impossibility of using them in theatre in the round.

Instead he has the actors miming and Sophie Acreman making the appropriate sound effects offstage. While that works well, the space is a bit cramped to indulge in the full physicality of farce and many of the actors are not up to speed. In a fairly pedestrian affair, most delightful is a touch of absurdity that sees four characters bitten by a vicious poodle. They all emerge sporting bandaged hands, including the mother-in-law who strangely only encounters the animal after its death.