BOEING BOEING To 25 April.
Liverpool/Tour.
BOEING BOEING
by Marc Camoletti translated by Beverley Cross and Francis Evans.
Liverpool Playhouse To 17 January
Mon-Sat 7.30pm except 24, 31 Dec 2pm only Mat Thu 1.30pm & Sat 2pm.
no performance 25-26 Dec, 1 Jan.
Audio-described 29 Dec.
BSL Signed 10 Jan 2pm.
Captioned 16 Jan.
then tour to 2009.25 April 2009.
Runs2hr 20min One interval.
TICKETS: 0151 709 4776.
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 December.
High-class production finds the truth behind the laughs.
Reviving his successful 2007 West End production as finale of the Everyman/Playhouse operation for Liverpool’s Year of Culture, prior to a tour, director Matthew Warchus has gone one better than the late Marc Camoletti.
Boeing Boeing contrasts initially assured Bernard, who runs three air-hostess mistresses (this was the 1960s), depending on their airlines’ schedules to keep them from meeting in his Paris flat (it was the sixties, but did planes fly so reliably on time?) and his country cousin Robert. He arrives as unexpectedly as Bernard’s women are about to do when the farcical action gets under way. For Warchus has now cast brothers John and Martin Marquez in the roles.
Memory’s left a glow around the 2007 Comedy Theatre cast. Roger Allam’s super-confident Bernard needed more deflating than the relevant Marquez, while Francis de la Tour had a commanding moral fearsomeness entirely different form Susie Blake’s weary maid Bertha. John Marquez seems a dead spit for Mark Rylance as he tumbles untidily into his cousin’s world, even if he doesn’t spiral into quite the extremes Rylance reached in his attempts to keep his cousin’s secrets from the various women.
And so on, no doubt. But both Liverpool and subsequent tour venues will have audiences new to the production. And they’re being served strong performances, as well as Rob Howell’s ultra chic setting. Besides, different doesn’t have to mean inferior. What seems clear from this evening is the difference between two sorts of relationship. There’s high-gloss amatory shenanigans (it’s hard to say sex; in sixties theatre that happened on the Fringe or in Kenneth Tynan revues; this never goes beyond anything a moderately frisky maiden-aunt might appreciate).
And love, the finding of fulfilment. Despite the leg-baring dolly-skirts of the just pre-feminist days, it is the women who determine the resolution of the action. Be it emasculating men to make America great, a Germanic Valkyrie finding her soft spot, or the search for married love, these women, the current Warchus account make clear, are as purposeful and determined as Ann Whitefield in Shaw’s Man and Superman. And that’s saying a lot.
Bertha: Susie Blake.
Gretchen: Josephine Butler.
Gloria: Sarah Jayne Dunn.
Robert: John Marquez.
Bernard: Martin Marquez.
Gabriella: Thaila Zucchi.
Director: Matthew Warchus.
Designer: Rob Howell.
Lighting: Hugh Vanstone recreated by: Tim Lutkin.
Sound: Simon Baker.
Music: Claire Van Kampen.
Dialect coach: Sally Hague.
Associate director: Mark Schneider.
Assistant director: Lisa Spirling.
2008-12-23 01:13:45