THE master of 19th- century French farce meets the master of 20th- century British theatre in a touring production of Where There’s a Will at the Playhouse next week.

Sir Peter Hall directs Georges Feydeau’s tale of lust, infidelity and the battle of the sexes in a version adapted into English by Nicki Frei.

Angele, the wealthy widow of a philanderer, is recently married for the second time and is determined to keep his wandering eye in check. But her plans are complicated by the arrival of her husband’s close friend, who is determined to pursue Angele for himself.

“The characters are under terrible pressure. It’s a crisis in their lives of such enormity that the only way they can handle it is to speak terribly fast and try to make plans and get their way out of this nightmare they are in,” explains the Royal Shakespeare Company founder.

This is delicious farce, as the characters get more and more tangled up in their increasingly convoluted situation. But, while the play includes plenty of humour, this is not the only reaction Hall is aiming for.

“You don’t play farce in order to get laughs, you play farce to get a very rich reaction from the audience which is part laughter, part shock, part amusement,” he says.

The set design is as crucial to the pace of the play as the dialogue. As the morality of the play is only lightly touched upon, English Touring Theatre has created a lightness on stage with pale walls, parquet floors and chandeliers. Much of the action is drive by the comings and goings through a set of five doorways – with the audience waiting expectantly to see which one will open and which of the six characters will step through.

Where There’s A Will’s tight construction made it one of Feydeau’s favourite plays, reveals Hall. “It’s beautifully constructed, beautifully written, and the French is very funny,” he says.

“ I think Nicki’s made the English very funny, not in the sense of putting jokes in, but trying to find the English equivalent of the hyper, lust-filled nightmare that the characters all go through.”

* WHERE There’s A Will, at the Liverpool Playhouse, Tuesday, March 31, to Saturday, April 4.