Best French Vaudeville
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La Puce à l'oreille (A Flea in Her Ear) is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau in 1907. The plot centers on a woman who sets up a rendezvous at a disreputable Parisian hotel to test her husband's fidelity, which leads to a complex sequence of mistaken identities. The play is a promi...
"Un chapeau de paille d'Italie" is an 1851 French vaudeville play written by Eugène Labiche and Marc-Michel. It is widely considered a masterpiece of 19th-century French comic theater and a defining work of the farce genre. The plot revolves around a man who must find a replacement for an Italian st...
La Dame de chez Maxim (The Girl from Maxim's) is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau in 1899. The narrative follows Dr. Petypon, a respectable provincial medical student, who wakes up with a showgirl from the Maxim's restaurant after a night in Paris. The situation escalates into ch...
Un fil à la patte is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau in 1894. The plot follows Bois d'Enghien, a man attempting to sever his relationship with his possessive mistress, Lucette, so he can safely marry a wealthy heiress. The narrative relies on the rapid accumulation of coincidenc...
L'Hôtel du libre échange is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau and Maurice Desvallières in 1894. The plot is set in a Parisian hotel where multiple couples attempt to conduct secret, illicit rendezvous simultaneously. The structure relies on the physical movement of characters betw...
Occupe-toi d'Amélie is a French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau in 1908. The plot begins when Marcel requests his friend Étienne to serve as a temporary husband for his mistress, Amélie, a cafe-concert singer, while Marcel is called away for military service. What is intended as a fake m...
Le Dindon (The Turkey, also translated as Sauce for the Goose) is a three-act farce by Georges Feydeau that premiered at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris in 1896. The play follows multiple characters caught in escalating schemes of marital infidelity, with plots involving mistaken identities, di...
*Le Voyage de M. Perrichon* is a French comedy by Eugène Labiche and Édouard Martin, first performed at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris in 1860. The play follows a prosperous Parisian shopkeeper and his family on a journey to Mont Blanc, satirizing bourgeois self-satisfaction and ingratitude thro...
*Monsieur Chasse!* is a French vaudeville farce by Georges Feydeau, first performed in 1892 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris. The plot centers on a husband who uses a hunting trip as a pretext for an extramarital affair while his wife pursues a liaison of her own, leading to overlapping rende...
"Le Système Ribadier" is a French stage play classified as a vaudeville farce, co-written by Georges Feydeau and Maurice Hennequin in 1892. The plot centers on a husband, Ribadier, who regularly uses hypnosis to manage his wife and conceal his infidelities. The narrative escalates into complex, chao...
On purge Bébé is a one-act farce written by the French playwright Georges Feydeau and first performed in 1910 at the Théâtre des Nouveautés in Paris. The play centers on Follavoine, a porcelain manufacturer trying to secure a government contract, while his wife Chouilloux insists on administering an...
Boubouroche is a one-act comedy by the French playwright Georges Courteline, first performed in 1893 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris. The title character, Justin Boubouroche, is a good-natured but naive worker who remains oblivious to the infidelity of his mistress Adrienne, who is involved...
"Feu la mère de Madame" is a one-act farce by the French playwright Georges Feydeau, first staged in 1908. The plot revolves around a husband's increasingly frantic and farcical attempts to wake his heavily sedated wife to inform her of her mother's passing. Feydeau uses the restricted setting and r...
Chat en poche (English: 'Pig in a Poke') is a one-act farce by the French playwright Georges Feydeau, first performed in 1888. The title refers to the French idiom for purchasing something without inspecting it first. Like Feydeau's other works, the play relies on rapid dialogue, mistaken identity,...
Frou-Frou is a five-act French theatrical comedy written by the duo Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, premiering in Paris at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in 1869. The narrative centers on Gilberte, a charming but frivolous young woman known by the nickname Frou-Frou, whose impulsive and irresponsible...
Tailleur pour dames is a one-act French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau, premiering in 1886. The plot is driven by classic farcical mechanics, beginning when a doctor makes a secret detour to his wife's fashionable dressmaker, leading to a cascade of hidden identities and comic misinterp...
"Divorçons!" is a French comedy written by Victorien Sardou and Émile de Najac that premiered in 1880. The play centers on a married couple who decide to divorce, with the wife initially scheming to end the marriage before ultimately reassessing her feelings for her husband. It is a classic example...
"La Cagnotte" is an 1864 vaudeville play written by Eugène Labiche and Alfred Delacour. The comedic farce follows a group of provincial gamblers whose pooled lottery winnings lead to escalating misadventures during a trip to Paris. It serves as a classic example of 19th-century French theatrical com...
"Les Boulingrin" is a one-act comedy by the French author Georges Courteline, first performed in 1898. The play features a relentlessly quarreling married couple whose aggressive arguments escalate into a bizarre situation where they try to murder each other, only to reconcile when a hapless visitin...
Monsieur Badin is a one-act theatrical sketch written in 1897 by French author Georges Courteline. The play satirizes the culture of the French civil service through its titular character, an apparently lazy but highly indispensable bureaucrat who manipulates his superiors. It employs sharp, comedic...
Les Gaietés de l'escadron is a comedic work by French author Georges Courteline, originally published as a series of sketches in 1886. The narratives satirize the absurdities and rigid hierarchies of French military barracks life, drawing heavily on Courteline's own experiences in the army. The sket...
L'Anglais tel qu'on le parle is a one-act vaudeville play written by Tristan Bernard in 1899. The short comedy revolves around a French man attempting to learn English, relying on a highly literal and flawed translation manual. This leads to a series of humorous misunderstandings and language-barrie...
"La Main passe" is a one-act French farce by Georges Feydeau, first performed in 1904, that exemplifies the playwright's mastery of the bedroom farce genre and his characteristic use of rapidly escalating complications. The plot centers on a husband whose attempt to confront his wife's lover sets of...
"Article 330" is a one-act comedy by French playwright Georges Courteline, first performed in 1900, that satirizes the rigid formalism of the French legal system. The play depicts a man brought before a magistrate on charges of public indecency whose attempts to explain his conduct only further enta...
"Mais n'te promène donc pas toute nue!" is a one-act French farce by Georges Feydeau, first performed in 1911, that uses domestic disorder to satirize bourgeois propriety. The plot involves a woman whose habit of undressing at home scandalizes household visitors and threatens her husband's standing...
'Le Commissaire est bon enfant' is an 1899 one-act French comedy written by Georges Courteline and Jules Lévy. The play is set entirely within a local police commissioner's office and exemplifies Courteline's signature style of satirizing French bureaucracy. It portrays the petty authority, systemic...
'L'Habit vert' is a classic French comedy play written in 1912 by the collaborative duo Robert de Flers and Gaston Arman de Caillavet. The title refers to the traditional green embroidered tailcoat worn by members of the prestigious Académie française. The narrative sharply satirizes the intellectua...
'La Chercheuse d'esprit' is an 1741 opéra-comique written by the prominent French playwright Charles-Simon Favart. As one of the earliest works in his career, it played a crucial role in establishing Favart's reputation as a foundational figure in the development of French comic theater. The piece b...
'Léonie est en avance' is a one-act French vaudeville farce written by Georges Feydeau in 1911. The plot centers on a bourgeois couple who frantically mismanage their preparations for what they mistakenly believe is an imminent premature birth. Feydeau masterfully escalates the comedic chaos by intr...
One-act vaudeville by Georges Feydeau (1897), a comic farce in which a lazy young master hypnotizes his manservant to avoid chores, with uncontrollable and absurd consequences.
