Bob Goepfert Reviews "Boeing, Boeing"

There’s a thin line between a funny play and a farce.  It’s as subtle as the difference between humor and comedy.

“Boeing, Boeing,” playing at Home Made Theater in Saratoga Springs, tries to be both and as should be expected it has mixed results.  There are plenty of laughs in the production, but too there are many slow moments.

An indication of the pace of the play is that it runs about two hours and forty minutes (with an intermission), which is at least 20 minutes too long.

When the production, which continues through May 4, finds the frantic energy of a farce it is a laugh-out-loud funny comedy.  However, when it gets bogged down with exposition and verbal word play it is, at best, merely humorous. 

For example, the first scene of the opening act is played almost entirely as exposition.  The fun is supposed to come from learning that Bernard is engaged to three women.  It is a scheme that works because the women are airline hostesses from different countries and since the play takes place in the 1960’s, their awkward flight schedules prevents them from being in the same place (his apartment) at the same time. 

However, even with the funny contributions of Robert, a nerdy friend who is in awe of Bernard’s arrangement, and the caustic asides of Berthe, the “I’ve seen it all” housekeeper, the segment is tediously slow.

However, once the second scene finds Bernard’s carefully plotted schedule falling apart as the new faster Boeing 707 reduces flight times, it becomes a funny exercise in desperate deception.  

The act is filled with close calls that are solved by “stacking” the women in various bedrooms and hiding things like flight bags that could tip off the girlfriend of the moment that another woman is also on the premises.   The act flows, the comedy builds, and it ends with many delicious, breathless moments.

Act two finds the three women in the apartment at the same time.  When the game of hide the fiancée continues, it is again fun but by this time the plot device has lost its freshness and the farcical elements of the play has slowed considerably.  The performers are left, with limited success, to force humor from a poor script.

Throughout the scenes have the same rhythm and the stakes for Bernard never seem very high.  There are many times when the confusion and problem solving devices are funny, but the presentation rarely expands on what came before and it becomes a play dependent of the success of individual scenes rather than a production that builds through flow.

Co-directors Michael C. Mensching and Michael McDermott do well adding some clever bits to the show.   The performances are solid and energetic.  Disappointing is that an attractive cast performing in a sex comedy rarely makes the material sexy.

There are shifts in power and even attitudes, but essentially the performances are a case of what you see in the first few moments of the play is essentially the same as what you get at play’s end. Thank goodness what you see is pretty good.

“Boeing, Boeing,” at Home Made Theatre. The Little Theatre in Saratoga State Park, Saratoga Springs. Through May 4 Performances 8 p.m. Fridays & Saturdays, 2p.m. Sundays.

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