Marc Camoletti's 'Boeing Boeing' at Hedgerow Theatre

Director Damon Bonetti assembles a fine cast for this retro comedy about an American in Paris (Andrew Parcell, charmingly innocent as duplicitous Bernard). Bernard uses flight schedules (published in a big book -- how quaint!) to manage his three fiancées, all of whom are "air hostesses" for three different airlines.

"Fiancées are much better than wives," he tells his lonely friend Robert (Mark Swift), who is visiting from Wisconsin. Love is fresh, juices are flowing, no one is tied down, and for variety, why not have three? Just monitor their schedules so they never show up at the same time. What could be easier, right?

Inevitably, of course, it all goes hilariously wrong. Welcome to a well-crafted farce!

Women rule

The situation sounds dated and misogynistic, but Bonetti smartly recognizes that the playwright creates three strong, independent, vivacious women in Meredith Beck's Gloria (American: TWA), Hanna Gaffney's Gabriella (Italian: Air Italia), and Allison Bloechl's Gretchen (German: Lufthansa). Costume designer Sean Quinn color-codes them for us (red, powder blue, and yellow, respectively) not only with uniforms, but also from shoes and hats to sleepwear and luggage.

While Bernard thinks he's fooled them all — and we expect stereotypical stewardesses with the depth, if not the prissy morals, of Suzanne Somers's immortally awful Chrissy from Three's Company — they are not fools. Camoletti, Bonetti, and these capable performers reveal that the women are really in charge. Since it's a farce, I'm not breaking any confidence by mentioning that the play ends happily for all the characters, but not because Bernard and Robert fool the women, as we might expect. It’s because the women make independent choices that only coincidentally save the men from the ruinous discovery they deserve.

Farce's needs met, and more

Bonetti stages Boeing Boeing with a farce's requisite frenetic action, aided by Zoran Kovcic's colorful set and its six doors (each a different pastel), abstract pastel paintings of different shapes, and even custom-designed "mod" furniture, all vaguely suggesting the psychedelic swinging '60s, but mainly just kooky and fun.

The entire cast, including Trice Baldwin's magnificently funny Berthe (Bernard's taciturn French live-in maid who ferociously rules his apartment), plunges into the play's physical comedy with inspired verve. Dashes, leaps, pratfalls, slapstick violence, and slithering are accomplished with energy and skill, and without that stilted choreographed look that makes clever movement feel stale.

Intelligent, committed acting isn't wasted on farce — as Boeing Boeing shows, it's a requirement.