Hotel d'Amour

Hotel d'Amour is based on the greatest of all farces, A Flea in Her Ear, by French master farceur Georges Feydeau. Victor Emmanuel Chandebise is a successful, straight-laced insurance salesman in 1912 Paris. When his wife, Raymonde, receives a package with Victor's suspenders sent back from the notorious Hotel d'Amour, a well-known meeting place for trysting lovers, she naturally (and wrongly) assumes he is having an affair. Raymonde, encouraged by her bombshell best friend, Lucienne, sets our to trap Victor by writing him a love letter from a "secret admirer" and inviting him to meet her at Hotel d'Amour. This triggers a series of complications that climaxes in hilarious second-act pandemonium, as everyone in the Chandebise household, plus a few assorted friends and business acquaintances, becomes entangled in a mad chase at the hotel. Thrown into the potpourri are a lascivious doctor, a sexpot housemaid, a degenerate bellhop, a gun-toting jealous husband, an incurable Don Juan, and a hotel-managing husband and wife who have seen and done it all, and are not afraid to charge a little extra for it. Replete with sidesplitting dialogue, a wonderful double role for the actor playing both the insurance salesman, Victor Chandebise, and the decadent bellhop, Poche, and rousing songs like the title Can-Can number and Raymonde's touching, wry ballad "He Sells Insurance," Hotel d'Amour is a mad romp through 1912 Paris. Conceived and originally directed by noted Chicago director Gary Griffin, Hotel d'Amour continues to delight audiences who love toe-tapping tunes, loveable characters, and riotous dialogue.