Andi Foster as"Baroness DeBarthele" and senior Ethan Hedeen as "Count Montigiroux" rehearse a scene from "The Cure for Love" at Western Michigan University.KALAMAZOO — "The Cure for Love" is a little naughty, little salty, French pastry.
Written by Jay Berkow, Western Michigan University director of music theatre performance, and directed by Jim Daniels, the period sex farce made its WMU debut at the D. Terry Williams Theatre Thursday night.
Basing it on an obscure Alexandre Dumas novel, "Fernande: The Story of a Courtesan," Berkow turned what could've been dry academic exercise into a funny farce that winks modernly at the audience.
Young Maurice de Barthele (a hilariously melodramatic Brian Martin) is raving at the beginning over a woman who spurned his love and "tore my soul to shreds!" He ends up rolling around in a gilded wheelchair, pathetically sick with love.
"He's French, disgustingly rich and has no occupation. What else is he to do but obsess about love?" his mother, Baroness de Barthele (Andi Foster) remarks.
His newlywed wife Clotilde (Susie Parr) is merely bewildered about her husband freaking out over another woman. But, of course, it's all explained later in a winking aside noting "how French we are."
They're French and upper class; it's 1835 and having a mistress is expected. The Baroness has been a clandestine lover of Count de Mantigiroux (Ethen Hedeen) for 30 years, so long they act like a married couple, and he's obviously had mistresses outside of his mistress.
A scheming cad, Fabien (Aleks Krapivkin), brings a mystery woman to the estate as a cure for Maurice's love. She's the courtesan Fernande (Jody Burns), a woman who's earned a living using her "mysterious powers" on every man in Paris and in the play.
The obnoxious busybody Madam du Neuilly (Sara Bower) is tossed in the mix, and shenanigans, gropings and fan-flutterings ensue.
A simple but elegant set (scenic designer Erin Hemming) framed characters dressed as colorful post-Napoleonic peacocks (costumes by guest artist Tracy Christensen). Ridiculously ornate hair (by Garrylee McCormick) crowned the ladies. The authentic period look added to the comedy — a pratfall in a hoop skirt is really the best kind of pratfall.
The cast clearly had fun delivering (and, in one case, spitting) dialog dense with double-entendres and lewd allusions — "a soufflé rises more consistently," "erotic tastes in cravats," "reckless romp in the roquefort," and a few we probably shouldn't print.
But out of the sexy and sometimes silly repartee, the story of Fernande develops into something a bit more serious.
With a strong performance by Burns, she turns out more than just the subject of risqué asides as "a right of passage" for French males. She's got a few lessons about love to teach the men and the women of the estate. The overall moral of the story is the most modern twist of "Cure for Love" — guys, if you want to be happy with women, respect them.