If you’ve seen one of Drayton Entertainment’s farces this season, you’ve seen them all.
The couches are a different colour and the characters have new accents, but the latest charade Boeing Boeing is virtually indistinguishable from Run for your Wife and Look, No Hans! – two other comedies on Drayton’s stages this summer.
In the world of the farce, infidelity is a riot and blatant female stereotypes are a hoot. Toss these together with a little national profiling and groan-worthy toilet humour, and you’ve got the general idea.
Enter Bernard, a successful American architect living in Paris with a strict schedule; a timetable that has nothing to do with work and everything to do with the three women he’s engaged to: Gloria, Gabriella and Gretchen, or as his maid calls them, America, Italy and Germany.
They’re all airline stewardesses and all madly in love with him. Up until now, the revolving door that is Bernard’s flat has been rotating with precision as each woman takes her turn coming home while the others remain airborne or in transit.
Suddenly the introduction of new and faster aircraft threatens to send Bernard’s perfect system into a tailspin, as he finds all three women returning home simultaneously. Now he must rely on his maid Bertha and his friend Robert to help maintain the façade.
The women in question are brought to life with over-the-top passion and lusty bravado. Gretchen, played by Jackie Mustakas, in particular, delivers a deafening opening monologue with red-faced enthusiasm and speaks every line with a passion to rival any Shakespearean actress.
Meanwhile, fiery Gloria incessantly chews her gum, and Gabriella raves with a temper that lives up to her red hair. Then there is poor Bernard, played by James Kall, who is tossed to the sidelines; a meek lead character who doesn’t seem nearly intelligent enough to seduce and deceive one woman, let alone three.
More than once he is seen in the fetal position or screaming into a sofa pillow when his impish smile is rendered useless.
Similar to Drayton’s other farces this season, the production is saved by its secondary characters, who help carry it to the end of its nearly three-hour running time.
Keith Savage as Robert and Valerie Boyle as Bertha steal the show – Savage in particular as he, at first innocently, attempts to distract Bernard’s fiancées but ends up succumbing to their attractiveness himself.
Savage’s physical comedy is spot on and reminiscent of Dick Van Dyke as he enthusiastically dashes from one side of the stage to the other.
Likewise, Boyle is perfect in her role as the cynical cockney maid, evoking the attitude of Gone with the Wind’s Mammy as she mutters one-liners and stomps in and out of scenes hiding the evidence that would expose Bernard.
On and on it goes like this. Doors slam, tears are shed and someone gets a spanking.
A farce’s success is dependent on perfect timing and interplay between the characters, however here they seem to exist within their own space, each performing a solo show seemingly trying to one up the other.
They are caricatures in the extreme, so over the top that by the end of the play, you’re not rooting for anyone.
Yes, stereotypes and sexual humour are the farce’s bread and butter, but so are wit and clever social commentary. A farce’s goal is to reflect the idiosyncrasies of a society back on those living in it, so unless someone in the audience flew into Cambridge from the 1970s, an opportunity is being missed.
If the point of a farce is to make light of our human flaws, is there not more to work with outside a man’s ability to keep it in his pants? Anyone who regularly tunes into Saturday Night Live knows our time is ripe with material.
That being said, if “farce” is derived from the French word for “stuffing” or “padding,” Boeing Boeing is a success, filling the time between Drayton Entertainment greats like Les Mis and South Pacific – but this time, it’s a long layover.
Boeing Boeing is on stage at the Dunfield Theatre in Cambridge until Aug. 30. For tickets visit www.dunfieldtheatrecambridge.com or call 1-855-DRAYTON (372-9866).
