Just an ordinary bourgeois family: Monsieur Follavoine, his wife, and their son Toto, nicknamed Baby despite his seven years. But this morning, Toto is constipated. The very morning his father is waiting for Monsieur Chouilloux, to whom he wants to sell his unbreakable porcelain chamber pots for the French army. Baby is indeed running the show: the hysteria triggered by his constipation shatters any semblance of marital harmony. Feydeau's vaudeville, written at the very time Freud was describing the crude mechanisms of the unconscious, is of a rare ferocity. "All the characters are absolutely unbearable," says composer Philippe Boesmans, who delights in the play's comic virtuosity, scatology and its lucidity. Richard Brunel, who has directed Feydeau in the theatre, is responsible for the libretto and staging. The Belgian composer wants each of the characters to sing "as they are" and to give the "brilliant and virtuoso" orchestra its full expressive function.