BOEING BOEING.

London.

BOEING BOEING
by Marc Camoletti translated by Beverley Cross.

Comedy Theatre.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm.
Runs 2hr 35min One interval.

TICKETS: 0870 060 6637.
www.boeingboeing.co.uk (£2.50 transaction fee)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 February.

Boeing, Boeing, back again.
This French farce, with its then up-to-date international flavour, notched up 7 West End years in the 1960s. It could rev through some years, and casts, still in a century when the comparative novelty of air-travel, and bright TWA, Alitalia and Lufthansa flight-bags, not to mention sleek stewardesses in eye-catching, figure-hugging uniforms, is long past.

Women then knew their place in farce, somewhere tight-fitting and short-skirted, becoming progressively more unrobed (but never severely disrobed) as the action accelerates. But they’re less sexual stereotypes than national ones as philandering Bernard tries a threefold box-and-cox with assertive American Gloria, fiery Italian Gabriella and Teutonic Valkyrie Gretchen.

Amid a bad-luck whirlwind the flight-schedules that have prevented them converging on his so-chic Paris flat (Bernard’s income source remains elusive) disappear in the plot slipstream. Speed and turbulence result, and Bernard’s self-assurance enjoyably implodes.

It’s not a great farce, nor even a particularly good one. The intriguing set-up isn’t matched by a sense of inevitability in events; the women’s arrivals and departures and the outcomes of male stratagems to keep them apart are too arbitrary.

It’s still a highly effective laugh-machine, thanks to two characters. Old friend Robert provides provincial grit (Welsh valleys here) in the smooth metropolitan machine, timid, unworldly but gradually enjoying the swing of capital things. And Bernard’s maid Bertha, sardonic and increasingly fazed by the whirl of inventions and excuses in which she’s involved, adds a lot by saying little.

Director Matthew Warchus’s detailed yet uncluttered direction gives the colour-coded stewardesses space to focus their one character-dimension forcefully, contrasting this with 3 performances by actors able to create a first-class sense of character depth through economy-class means.

Roger Allam’s suavity gives way to a confusion forever fuelled by duplicity and the assumption it’s always somebody else’s fault, while Mark Rylance, in tweedy rural brown, awkwardly clutching his own luggage then trying to ram the women’s into each others’ flight-bags, maintains his initial timidity underneath the delight of newly-discovered passion. And Frances de la Tour turns in a tour de force as Bertha through a repertory of beautifully-gradated twitches, flickers and stares.

Gloria: Tamzin Outhwaite.
Bernard: Roger Allam.
Bertha: Frances de la Tour.
Robert: Mark Rylance.
Gabriella: Daisy Beaumont.
Gretchen: Michelle Gomez.

Director: Matthew Warchus.
Designer: Rob Howell.
Lighting: Hugh Vanstone.
Sound: Simon Baker.
Music: Claire van Kampen.
Choreographer: Bruno Tonioli.

2007-02-21 09:28:49