L'essayeuse

A married couple spending a quiet sojourn at a country house trade playful intimacy and mild jealousies while preparing for the arrival of a recently divorced friend. The impending visit prompts negotiations of propriety and social expectation, producing comic misunderstandings, teasing exchanges, and contrasts between the ardor of courtship and the habits of married life. Presented in one act within a drawing-room setting, the piece lampoons bourgeois manners and probes the friction between private affection and public respectability.