The Lady From Maxim’s

   “It seems to me that for fertility in droll inventions, the perpetual outpouring of unforeseen misunderstandings, for the inexhaustible gaiety of dialogue, Feydeau’s new play is superior to everything he’s written so far. The most astonishing thing is the sureness with which everything is controlled, explained, justified, in the most extravagant buffoonery. The cross-purposes rebound non-stop, and every time one is introduced, one thinks, `Yes, that’s true, it couldn’t happen any other way.’ There is no idle detail, not one that hasn’t its function in the action, not a word which will not have, at a given moment, its repercussion in the comedy, and this word, I don’t know how it’s done—it’s the gift of the dramatist—sinks into the memory, and reappears just at the moment when it has to cast a vivid light on an incident, which we did not expect, but which seems entirely natural, which charms us both by its unpredictability and by our impression that we did predict it… The first act lasts no less than an hour, and there isn’t a moment’s boredom; the absurdities burst one after another with a marvelous abundance and intensity. I have seen nothing like it.”Francisque Sarcey, Le Temps