Don't Dress for Dinner
Good gravy, what a funny and frenetic first act for this, the most requested return engagement ever at North Coast Rep. (They first produced it 17 years ago.) Marc Camoletti’s madcap adventure in marital mores and mistaken identity sends us to a converted farm outside Paris — the guest bedrooms are referred to by their former roles of cowshed and piggery. It’s a cute nod at the play’s plenitude of BS and swinery — adulterous intent and the incessant lying required to cover for same are the engine and wings for this farcical flight of fancy. As we open, wife Jacqueline is set to visit her mother for the weekend, and it seems that hubby Bernard has planned a rendezvous with his paramour Suzanne. But then his old buddy Robert shows up from out of town, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s having an affair with Jacqueline, so she contrives to stick around. Add cook-for-hire Suzette into the mix — why, you could shorten both that and Suzanne to Suzi, couldn’t you? — and you have a recipe for constantly-and-deliciously-averted disaster. And since most everybody is either trying to misbehave or making money covering for said misbehavior, there’s no need to feel bad for anyone. You can just sit back and let the hilarity wash over you. Or, even better, try to keep up with the sheer number of twists and turns brought on by various situations and (mis)communications. The Rep has brought in an expert cast — rapid-fire comedy like this lives or dies by timing and reaction, and here, it flourishes in full flower. If the men are slightly more manic in their mendacity, well, they’re men on a mission. And if the ladies are slightly more bald in their slip-ups, well, they’re less practiced at plotting. (Veronica Dunne’s Suzette has the least to feel guilty about, and so she has the most fun.) It’s all great fun — until the second act, when the constant need for confusion begins to take its toll, and the question arises of how exactly all this ought to end. It’s not bad by any means, just a little less good. And the ending feels designed to soothe an audience that has just been buffeted by the winds of societal change, concluding that bad behavior isn’t so much bad as it is exhausting.