‘A Flea’ on your funny bone> Farce’s cast hilarious

With Penobscot Theatre’s production of “A Flea in Her Ear,” director Jay Skriletz puts theatergoers in a deliciously terrible position. You aren’t thinking the usual stuff, such as: Did I like this play, or did I have fun? If you like rollicking comedies, then you’ll unquestionably like this kooky, mixed-up sex farce, written originally by Georges Feydeau and adapted to a 1960s milieu by Frank Galati. And most everybody will have fun watching the actors do wacky, slapstick routines, too.

So the tough question becomes: Which of the performers makes you laugh the hardest?

For the most part, every cast member puts a notch in the old laugh meter on this one. Keith Robinson, as the butler, uses understatement to up-play the zany cluelessness of his character. Eric Chase is a comical joker as the playboy Blase, and Ron Lisnet, as the owner of the Hotel Pussy a Go-Go, is about as sleazy as a guy can get. Julie Lisnet and Tamela Glenn, as girlfriends who team up to put a scheme over on one of their husbands, play some very funny moments — both with each other and with various “suitors.”

But the ones who push the buzzer up to maximum volume are Ron Adams, Robert Libbey and Mark Torres.

Adams plays the secretary Claude Deboshe, who has a speech impediment that allows him to pronounce only vowels. These are the types of loony roles Adams has a particular God-given talent for. He does a heavenly job with this deadpan humor that nevertheless allows him to cut loose by the end.

Libbey has the lead role of Victor Deboshe, a very straight-laced insurance salesman whose life goes kaflooey when his wife suspects him of having an affair because their love life has been a bit limp lately. Libbey also plays Goshe, who is identical to Deboshe but is a drugged-up bellboy at Pussy a Go-Go. It’s not just that Libbey moves easily back and forth between the two characters (and, amazingly, makes the necessary costume changes so he can fly onto stage in character). But he is also extremely focused with his depictions, and it’s no secret that humor is his forte.

Torres, in one of his rare stage appearances, plays a feisty, lisping Spaniard whose jealousy lights him up like a firecracker. Torres explodes the stage with energy, charisma, idiocy. In this red-hot role, he blazes, and he’ll cut you up every time he’s on stage. His presence surely has the effect of bringing some of the other actors up a few rungs in their own performances.

Jay Skriletz’s set is a major player here, too. At first, it depicts the elegant Deboshe living room in Paris, and then is rebuilt as the Hotel Pussy a Go-Go with trashy colors and oval beds. The orchestration of the change is quite an event in and of itself. (In fact, it’s worth giving up one of your bathroom breaks during the two intermissions just to watch the stage crew do its thing.) You may get the feeling that the actors are going to fall through a piece of flimsy furniture or crash through a wobbly wall, but the set is a puzzle-like accomplishment worth applauding.

Ginger Phelps’ mod costumes revive the Twiggy look, the hippie look, the Beatle look, and — to a lesser degree — the Jacqueline Kennedy look. She could have taken the whole thing a little further, but her work has that bold, bright sense of color and craziness that works for the show.

It’s likely that this will be one of those most-talked-about productions of the year because the cast is so strong, the choreography of the humor is so thorough, and the opportunity to laugh so constant. The show gets off to a slow start, but stick with it. You’ll be flipping out by the end of Act I.

“A Flea in Her Ear” will be performed at 7 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 5 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 16 at Penobscot Theatre. For tickets, call 942-3333.