Boeing Boeing

I remember seeing this play when it was in the West End, it was my first exposure to farce and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  That was a few decades ago but it has stood the test of time well and this production felt fresh and modern.  I remembered it as being a lot of fun and LTC certainly revived those fond memories for me.  The script is extremely well written and I am surprised that it is not performed more frequently.

The story is simple but the action is not and the cast had to time their entrances very carefully to make it all work.  Director Colin Bott did reveal, to me, how this was done and congratulations to him for thinking of a solution and to Debbie Smallbone for co-ordinating it so well.  

The play was extremely well cast, Julian Cottee played Bernard, who is engaged to three Air Hostesses.  All of whom stay with him in his Paris apartment when they are on stopovers.  Sue Morley is his long suffering Housekeeper Bertha and she gave a terrific, well timed performance, invoking lots of comic moments.  The three Air Hostesses, played by Laura Witherall (the American, Gloria) Laura Harper (the Italian, Gabriella) and Victoria Tewes (the German, Gretchen) were perfect, with good accents and mannerisms.  Darren Harper played the visiting friend Robert and this was a masterful performance to study.  He displayed a full range of emotions and, despite appearing to lose control; he had the whole performance tightly managed.  The Dixon is an intimate theatre space and it is such a joy to see the actor’s facial expressions, they really were living the performance and I could not fault it.  I liked the addition of an LTC Air Hostess played by, Kate Andrews, who introduced the play with some nice ‘airline’ references and provided an effective link to the interval and second half.

The simple set was very effective and well dressed.  I knew that it had to withstand a lot of door opening and closing and there was no sign of ‘wobbly set syndrome’.  Well done to Chris Lidgard and Colin Bott for making this work so well.  The costumes were perfect and there was evidence of a lot of research to make them and the props as accurate as possible.  Incidental music was well matched to the setting of the play.

Overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening’s entertainment; I could have watched it again!  As always LTC’s front of house team and interval hospitality was superb, thank you again.

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