First-Class Farce

One perk of theater criticism is you’re often given the script for a play that’s been off the scene. That certainly applies to Marc Camoletti’s Boeing-Boeing, which ran on Broadway for 19 days in 1965 and fell off the radar faster than you can say Bermuda Triangle. True, the sex-farce-loving Brits kept it going-going for over seven years during the swinging ’60s, and the Guinness Book of World Records, in the early ’90s, proclaimed it the most-performed French play on earth. (Camoletti, who was French, died in 2003.) But in America, the play has long been going-going-gone.

Broadway, you see, has traditionally been unfriendly to farce, especially the libidinous kind. Maybe it’s the difficulty U.S. actors have adjusting their method-centric technique to the idea of flying in and out of doors for no reason but to make us laugh, or of making exclamations like “She’s back!” seem believable. Maybe it’s because realism-weaned American audiences resist suspending their disbelief to such a farcical degree.

But with director Matthew Warchus’ new, pure-genius revival of Boeing-Boeing transferred from the West End to Broadway, a sea change in attitude is in order. The subtitle—“a nonstop comedy”—may be a bit misleading (more on that later), but Boeing-Boeing is a caterwauling scream of insanity. I wish it a first-class, smooth flight. The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford plays Bernard, an American bachelor and businessman living in Paris who is constitutionally incapable of romantic commitment. He’s so averse that he’s engaged to three “air hostesses”: Gloria (Kathryn Hahn), a perky, free-spirited American; Gabriella (Gina Gershon), a sultry, earthy Italian; and Gretchen (Mary McCormack), a tall, domineering German. Any unwanted collisions are averted because Bernard has memorized all their flight timetables. As long as schedules stay consistent, no one gets hurt. Yet, as this is farce, pain is inevitable.

The unforeseen arrival of Bernard’s long-lost friend Robert—played by a long-faced Mark Rylance as a laser beam of deadpan delight—coincides with the schedules of all three women changing, thus initiating the action. Indeed, the only thing standing between Bernard’s arrangement and total disaster is Robert, who the women, for various reasons, hit on as well as hit, kiss as well as kiss off. The scene in which Bernard realizes the jig could be up is one of the most artfully delivered pure-farce moments in recent Broadway history, only topped by the physical pratfalls Rylance suffers through—his testicles pulverized, a beanbag to his head or being hurled by that manic Germanic giantess.

All of which cruelly amuses Bernard’s snickering maid Berthe, who the peerless Christine Baranski transforms from an insult machine into a centrifugal farce all her own. Entombed in mannish clothing, a pixie wig and glaring behind black plastic spectacles stolen from Beat poets, Berthe’s contempt for the lunacy about her is a combustible keg ever ready to explode. Seven doors swing open and shut on Rob Howell’s swanky white set (allowing the mod, color-coded costumes to pop), but the one leading to the kitchen, with the porthole window, is what gives Baranski the funniest take of the night.

The sweat-drenched Whitford essays the beleaguered straight man’s authentic joie de vivre, slipping into a quivering skip-step whenever a new complication threatens Bernard’s well-calibrated world. While perhaps too old to play the swinger—Whitford looks more like a booty-hungry divorcé—he’s guided superbly by Warchus, whose staging is elegant as a mathematical proof. The director’s one worrisome choice is when, cued by the script, he permits Whitford and Rylance a serious scene or two and the energy flags. All right, they both need a second to breathe, but the script does say “nonstop.” Still, what’s an airplane ride without turbulence?

Open run. Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th St. (betw. Broadway & 8th Ave.), 212-239-6200; $26.50-99.50.