Fleur de Cactus

Fleur de Cactus ("Flower if the cactus") is a French comedy by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy.

The original text

A play about a dentist who pretends to be married to avoid commitment, but when he falls for his girlfriend and proposes, he must recruit his lovelorn nurse to pose as his wife.

The first production was staged on 23 September 1964 by the Theatre des Bouffes-Parisiens in Paris.

Translations and adaptations

The American Abe Burrows wrote a 1969 American version of the play entitled Cactus Flower[1] based on Fleur de Cactus. After two previews, the Broadway production, directed by Burrows, opened on December 8, 1965, at the Royale Theatre, going on to run for two years and nine months.

The original stage play was translated from the French into Afrikaans by Nerina Ferreira, under the title As die Turksvy Blom ("when the prickly pear/cactus flowers"). The text published by Dalro in 1982[2].

A number of film adaptations have been made of the play[3], including an Egyptian movie called Half an Hour of Marriage (Arabic: نص ساعة جواز") and the well known Cactus Flower by I.A.L. Diamond (featuring Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman and Goldie Hawn), both released in 1969; a Bollywood movie called Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya? ("Why did I fall in love?") with Salman Khan, Sushmita Sen and Katrina Kaif (2005), Just Go With It starring Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston and Brooklyn Decker (2011) and a French made-for-television film, Fleur de Cactus (2017).