A Flea in Her Ear

A Flea in Her Ear
Man in working-class clothing carrying a ladder and some logs
Alexandre Germain as Poche, 1907
Written byGeorges Feydeau
Date premiered 1907 (1907-MM)
Original languageFrench
SettingParis

A Flea in Her Ear (French: La Puce à l'oreille) is a play by Georges Feydeau written in 1907, at the height of the Belle Époque. The author called it a vaudeville, but in Anglophone countries, where it is the most popular of Feydeau's plays, it is usually described as a farce.[1]

The plot hinges on the central characters having a double: a middle class businessman is indistinguishable from the hall porter of a shady hotel, and the two are persistently mistaken for each other, to the bafflement of both.

  1. ^ Bermel, Albert. "farce", The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Oxford University Press, 2003. Retrieved 1 August 2020 (subscription required); and Baldick, Chris. "farce" The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford University Press, 2015. Retrieved 1 August 2020 (subscription required)