Harrogate Theatre – until Saturday 8th September 2018
Reviewed By Dawn Smallwood
4****
Three plays, three weeks and one company are part of Harrogate Theatre’s Rep Company. It is significant because the theatre is bringing back repertory theatre for the first time after a 50 year absence. The line-up of plays includes Boeing Boeing on its very first night.
Marc Camolotti’s Boeing Boeing, a French farce is about Bernard (Alan Drake) who is an architect and bachelor in Paris. He is engaged to three air hostesses, Gloria (Polly Lister), Gabriella (Katy Dean) and Gretchen (Polly Smith). With Bernard’s ordered and thorough schedule, based on the airlines’ timetable book, the air hostesses don’t know of each other’s presences and of course his blatant infidelity. This has remained so until the arrival of his old school friend, Robert (Philip Stewart), and his rigid schedule is disrupted with flight delays, bad weather and a new modern and faster Boeing jet. This results in the three fiancées arriving at his apartment at the same time simultaneously.
Set in the 1960s the farce unfolds outrageously with chaos and the plot lives up to the expectations and correctly guessed assumptions remain so until the very end, literally the very end. The repertory cast portray the said characters passionately particularly with its quick thinking co-ordinated silly and clumsy tactics and plans of action. This is met with continuous and periodically exploded laughter which from time to time is met with applause.
Boeing Boeing is entertaining, cleverly written and ingeniously directed by Ben Roddy and produced by Stewart (also starring in the play). The farce invariably explores male and female relationships, individually and collectively and how attitudes towards them were viewed particularly during at that era of big social changes. The repertory cast delivers an excellent performance and actors are carefully chosen for their versatility across the Rep’s three plays.
This production is welcomed in Harrogate after previous productions in London’s West End and on Broadway. The Rep Company will next present Dial M for Murder and Private Lives during its runs.