With their final production for the year the Backstage Theatre Society’s pledge to audiences is to ‘let me entertain you’, and I am here to report that’s exactly what they do, and they do it really, really well.
Their vehicle is a classic old bedroom farce, Marc Camoletti’s bedroom farce, BOEING BOEING (1962). Some may know this play from the 1965 film adaptation starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis.
The storyline is only a slight one. The focus is on a big-time player. Bernard has the kind of ultimate swinging sixties bachelor lifestyle. He has his own Paris apartment and a great polygamous lifestyle with three gorgeous airhostess fiancees: German Gretchen, Italian Gabriella, and American Gloria. A shrewd operator Bernard schedules the ladies in at different times, and insists that they call him if they arrive in town unexpectedly.
The audience watches as the three beautiful women go in and out of his apartment and wait for Bernard’s inevitable fall when the women will run into each other. The play’s two remaining characters are Bernard’s loyal but very grumpy house-maid, Bertha, and his old childhood friend, Robert, who unexpectedly arrives at his front door one day and whom Bernard let’s stay for a while. Inevitably too, Robert wants a piece of Bernard’s action.
There is so much silliness and fun to be had from this play and director Luke Baweja and his fine actors don’t miss a beat of it, with the cast showing themselves very adept at physical comedy.
A lot of the comic richness of farce stems from the tensions exhibited by the main characters in their desperate bids to not come unstuck. A highlight was the shenanigans conveyed by Bernard, Robert and Bertha as they desperately try to change or hide the framed photo of the particular hostie depending on who is currently in the apartment. Things do get very chaotic at times!
Luke Baweja, in his directors’ note for the program, wrote, ‘there are no leads in this play’. By this Baweja is referring to how all six roles have a lot to offer, and the actors make the most of this. Their performances clearly depict where their character is ‘coming from’.
For Michael Mulvanna as Bernard and Alex Radovan as Robert, it’s all about acting on all those male hormones. Radovan’s frenetic, madcap performance reminded me of vintage Jim Carrey. Lovely stuff!
The gals were great. Emily Burke kind of stole the show in the first Act with her portrayal of housemaid, Bertha. A great performance. We know exactly where Bertha is at! She can’t stand her boss and his playboy antics. Nor she can stand the bimbos he entertains. We feel that she is always on the verge of bringing everything down around not so dear Bernard.
Sami- Jo Adelman is great as the sunny natured, demonstrative Italiano, Gabriella.
Rachael Versace plays brash, flirtatious, sexy Americana Gloria to the hilt.
As the moody, grumpy, overbearing German hostie, Gretchen has some great scenes, especially some very comic scenes with Robert.
BOEING BOEING was just so much fun. Alas, the fun has already come to an end. Backstage Theatre Society’s production of BOEING BOEING played a far too brief season at the Bon Marche Studio, Level One, Building 3, 755 Harris Street, Broadway at the University of Technology. The season ran from Wednesday November 27 to Friday November 29.