Friday Night at the Theater: "Boeing Boeing"

Last evening the husband/lover/hot date and my inlaws and I headed north to Williamsport, Pennsylvania to see the production "Boeing Boeing."

The Community Theater League performs in a small, three-sided venue, with all the action down on the floor visible from any seat in the theater.  I believe that type of venue is called a thrust space.   (Thank you SIL Dr. Lance Mekeel, doctorate in theater.)

The play is a bedroom farce comedy written by Marc Camoletti in 1960.  Some of you may recall the 1965 film version of the same name, starring Jerry Lewis and Tony Curtis.  Of course, photo taking  in the theater was prohibited, so all pictures here are internet stock images.

It's the 1960's, and swinging bachelor Bernard couldn't be happier:  a flat in Paris and three gorgeous stewardesses all engaged to him without knowing about each other.

Gloria the American, Gretchen the German, and Gabriella the Italian

But Bernard's perfect life gets bumpy when his friend Robert comes to stay and a new and speedier Boeing jet puts all three stewardesses in town simultaneously!

Bernard and Robert

 Robert watches in awe and amazement as Bernard and his maid try and keep schedules straight and fiances unaware of each other.

Bernard's maid does what she can to prepare Bernard's flat according to the complicated schedule of "arrivals and departures," but she nearly goes crazy with all the secretive comings and goings.

As you can imagine, things get pretty hairy, and well, I simply cannot have this post be a "spoiler" in case you want to see the movie or play.  I will just say that although some things go the way you would expect, there are certainly a few fun surprises until it is all said and done.

Want laughs?  Go see it when it comes to town, or find the movie and rent it.

The production used a set filled with furniture and props that those of us who lived back in the 1960's would remember and chuckle about how ugly they were and still are.  The only backdrop of the set had numerous doors, requiring hilarious, well-timed choreography for the entrances and exits.

The small cast of six - Bernard, his friend Robert, the three stewardesses, and the maid Berthe, all kept the shenanigans moving at a breakneck pace.

In the production we saw, Berthe, the female maid, was played by a large male.  In my opinion he simply stole the show with his funny portrayal of an overworked female service staff member.

The full cast

By the end of the story, both Bernard and Robert definitively learned that women are just too amazing, wonderful, complicated, valuable, beautiful, intelligent, insightful, and sensitive, to be able to handle more than one of them at a time.

Certainly a good lesson for any man to learn, but then, I could've told him that.