The finest Feydeau productions are those that most need a sedative. Graeme Garden's adaptation of Le Mariage de Barillon is hyperactive for the first act, becomes manic in the second, and courts the threat of a restraining order by the third. Deborah Norton's production whips up the action into a dizzy, delirious waltz: characters make projectile entrances and ricochet around the room - a game of human pinball with belle époque furniture. At the centre of it all, Griff Rhys Jones waves his arms around furiously, like a flailing conductor forfeiting command of a symphony of embarrassment.
Horse and Carriage bears a plot that passeth all understanding but that, in broad outline, is a two-hour mother-in-law joke. Jones's character, Barillon, is a middle-aged roué who fancies a bit of spring chicken, but gets saddled with the hen when he discovers he has married his fiancee's mother by mistake. Alison Steadman gives a magisterial performance as the fortunate Madame Jambart, a libidinous matron in gravity-defying lingerie. As Jones faints, face down, into the depths of her décolletage, we are reminded that Madame's previous husband met his death by drowning. Except that the old sea dog is still very much alive, and is the next to burst on to the crowded scene (which you were probably expecting), accompanied by a live seal (which you probably weren't).
By this point there are so many bouncing mammaries and barking mammals on stage that the whole structure of the piece appears to wobble: Garden's treatment seems driven by sheer desperation rather than farcical inevitability. The great welter of contradictory marriage announcements and annulments are comically fortuitous and psychologically baffling - though maybe the point is that marriage is a futile, bureaucratic contract, with little jurisdiction over unbridled lust.
Rhys Jones has turned into something of a Feydeau specialist of late. His performance in Peter Hall's production of an An Absolute Turkey was a West End success, and here he sports the same moustache and propensity to turn from puce to purple and back again. There's nothing here to match the brilliance of the boudoir bell-ringing set-piece of that previous play, but Jones still turns in a remarkable display of salon acrobatics, frequently hitting the parquet in a helpless foetal ball. By the end of it, I rather knew how he felt.
Until December 1. Box office: 0113-213 7700.
