A giddy `Boeing-Boeing' makes for a laugh-filled flight
NEW YORK—It takes a while to taxi down the runway, but when "
The play, which opened Sunday at Broadway's handsomely refurbished Longacre Theatre, revels in being retro. Well, at least 1960s retro, a French sex comedy with a lot of doors -- seven, in fact -- and three babes, a trio of flight attendants attired in the tightest, shortest skirts this side of Twiggy.
Set in Paris, "Boeing-Boeing," written by Marc Camoletti and translated by Beverley Cross and Francis Evans, deals with a conniving architect named Bernard (Bradley Whitford) who strings along the three ladies. He's able to juggle these liaisons because the women -- each working for a different airline -- are on exacting timetables and never in his flat at the same time.
Of course, with the advent of newer, faster planes, the precision of these assignations is totally thrown off. That's when the frantic funny business begins.
To complicate matters, there's the arrival of the man's good friend, Robert, a nerdish fellow from Wisconsin, played by Mark Rylance, an actor of supreme verbal and physical technique. Equally at home with William Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights such as Yasmina Reza, Rylance is the spark that ignites the evening's considerable laughter. Robert watches his friend's carefully constructed life unravel and conspires to help him avoid disaster.
The three flight attendants are cliches of national characteristics. The American (Kathryn Hahn), money-obsessed; the Italian (Gina Gershon) emotional, and the German (Mary McCormack) domineering and exacting. The actresses are delightful, particularly McCormack whose portrayal of the Amazonian Gretchen (what else would she be named?) is downright hilarious.
Whitford is the evening's straight man, who sets up many of the jokes, but he, too, manages to get his share of the laughs as his orderly existence collapses around him.
The production's one problematic character is Bernard's acerbic, hangdog housekeeper, played by Christine Baranski. Sporting an elongated Louise Brooks bob, the actress is saddled with an impenetrable French accent that muffles many of the maid's best lines. That Baranski is able to score as well as she does reflects on her considerable skill as a comedian.
Director Matthew Warchus is adept at keeping the play's foolishness spinning. Farce is inherently mechanical, and the director has well-oiled all its movable parts.
But then he is helped by a strong production team. Designer Rob Howell's pristine, all-white Parisian apartment, filled with all those doors, stands in nice contrast to the scampering flight attendants, decked out in Howell's form-fitting outfits of shocking red, blue and yellow. And check out that nifty bit of "Shindig!" or "Hullabaloo"-style choreography created by Kathleen Marshall for the curtain call.
"Boeing-Boeing" has had a peculiar stage history. A monster hit, of course, in Paris, it also was an enormous success in London's West End in the early 1960s. Yet, when first seen on Broadway in 1965, the play died after a three-week run. This sterling revival, based on a London production from last year, should do much to resurrect its reputation.
