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Shows Worth Seeing:
Boeing Boeing
By Marc Camoletti
Longacre Theatre
220 W. 48th St.
Box office: (212) 239-6200
Judging from the quaint plot
setup of Marc Camoletti’s early 1960s farce Boeing Boeing,
this new production directed by Matthew Warchus (a partially recast
London hit) has no business being as good as it is. A guy living
in Paris juggles three “fiancés,” all airline
hostesses, by keeping close tabs on their flight schedules to
make sure they never overlap . . . until one day a series of mishaps
upsets the arrangement. Sheeesh. Sounds like an old Jerry Lewis
snore showing at 3 a.m. on basic cable (Lewis starred with Tony
Curtis in the 1965 movie adaptation). As it happens, the piece
is bright, sharp and ferocious in Warchus’s version. This
is partly because the play works better onstage than onscreen—the
live presence of the actors really pumps up the risk and hilarity
of the physical gags. It's also partly because the director and
cast have grasped the basic secret of making farce work: play
the aggression, not the clowning or the bubbliness. The clowning
and bubbliness will take care of themselves as long as the writer
has made the jokes funny (which he has), whereas the pleasure
of the chaos—the full measure of the madness and baseness
of the farcical world—comes through only if the actors make
clear that their characters would gnaw through steel to get what
they want. That can be a tough call for beautiful actresses worried
about their hair, but here the trio of Kathryn Hahn, Gina Gershon
and Mary McCormack have thrown themselves into the game with feral
gusto. The results are hilarious. There is also a cunning, slow-cooking
performance by Mark Rylance as the buddy of the lead, played by
Bradley Whitford, that mustn’t be missed. Boeing Boeing
exudes a sweet effervescence that makes the most of its period
charm: a moment when the sexual revolution was still fresh, and
war, AIDS and internet porn hadn’t yet ruined the party.
If you giggled even once or twice at Austin Powers, this play
is likely to tickle you.
