Je ne trompe pas mon mari!
Je ne trompe pas mon mari! is a three-act farce by Georges Feydeau and René Peter. It was Feydeau's last full-length play. Opening in Paris in 1914, it ran for 200 performances. The plot revolves round the love life of a well-known painter, with the other characters in various permutations around him.
Background and first production
By 1914 Feydeau had written, on his own or in collaboration with other playwrights, more than twenty full-length plays, mostly farces. Several had enjoyed unusually long runs on the Paris stage. What is now one of his most popular plays, La Puce à l'oreille, had closed prematurely after 86 performances in 1907, following the sudden death of one of its stars, but its successor, Occupe-toi d'Amélie!, ran for 288 performances the following year – considered an excellent run at the time. A younger playwright, René Peter, brought him a script, which Feydeau agreed to rework and prepare for production. The biographer Henry Gidel speculates that the always courteous Feydeau may have felt constrained to revise the original script less drastically than he might have wished.Feydeau hoped that the cocotte, Bichon, would be played by Armande Cassive whom he had discovered in 1899 for his La Dame de chez Maxim and subsequently moulded into his ideal leading lady, but she was unavailable. Betty Daussmond played the role, and Feydeau admitted that she brought "joie de vivre" to it on "her pretty Columbine lips".
The play opened at the Théâtre de l'Athénée, Paris, on 18 February 1914 and ran until the customary summer closure of the theatres in July, a total of 200 performances.
Original cast
- Saint-Franquet – Lucien Rozenberg
- Des Saugettes – Paul Ardot
- Plantarède – Lucien Cazalis
- Le gérant – M. Cousin
- Tommy – M. Dillon
- Giclefort – M. Papoz
- Bichon – Betty Daussmond
- Micheline – Lucile Nobert
- Miss Doty – Alice Nory
- Mme Giclefort – Virginie Rolland
- Sophie – Rose Grane
Plot
The first act is set in the gardens of a spa resort. The fashionable painter Saint-Franquet is furious at being rebuffed by the virtuous Micheline Plantarède, wife of his closest friend. He picks a quarrel with Des Saugettes, a handsome young man attached to her.The second act is set in Saint-Franquet's studio in Paris, where the personages coming and going include Bichon, Des Saugettes and Miss Doty. Bichon, a young blonde, is the painter's girlfriend. She is a singer at a café-concert; scantily clad, she rehearses a number. Des Saugettes has become friendly with Saint-Franquet after their quarrel. Miss Doty is a petite American billionairess, who has fallen at first sight for Saint-Franquet and is determined to marry him, despite already having a fiancé, Tommy.
Saint-Franquet quarrels with Bichon, who declares that she has a protector ready to supplant him. He turns out to be Plantarède, Micheline's husband. She, finding her husband is cheating on her, decides to return the favour, and comes in pursuit of Saint-Franquet at the moment when he has just promised Miss Doty to marry her.
In the last act Saint-Franquet and Micheline are together in his bedroom. Bichon, who is worldly-wise and knows how men's minds work, takes matters in hand. Plantarède is persuaded that his wife has not cheated on him, but has merely faked adultery in revenge. The Plantarèdes are reconciled and Saint-Franquet is free to marry his petite American.