Review: Boeing Boeing at People's Theatre
Boeing Boeing was a West End fixture in the ’60s. David Whetstone reports on the new amateur production at the People’s Theatre
Boarding pass checked, seat belt on, barley sugar at the ready… here we go for a People’s Theatre flight back in time.
Back to the 1960s, in fact, when airline cabin crew were called air hostesses and people flocked to see French playwright Marc Camoletti’s farce about a guy with a singular notion of air traffic control.
Businessman Bernard (played by Sam Hinton) is less interested in ensuring planes land safely than in scheduling visits from his air hostess girlfriends – Gloria (Ashton Matthews), Gabriella (Francesca Rombi) and Gretchen (Emily Jeffrey) – so they don’t bump into each other.
If they did they would realise they’re not, after all, the special one. Each believes herself the fiancée (sort of) and behaves as if smitten.
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The action unfolds on an eye-catching set with Bernard’s Paris flat represented by a radiant semi-circular backdrop showing a stylised silhouette of the city skyline punctuated by doors.
The design team, led by Sands Dobson, has pushed the boat out. When Bernard’s old friend Robert (Conor McCready) turns up unexpectedly and admires the view, gazing out over the auditorium, I felt like calling out: “Are you blind? What about those seven doors behind you, all different colours? Spectacular, eh?”
Multiple doors in the theatre spell farce and soon, naturally, people are going in and out of them.
Gloria (American, TWA, tight red skirt) departs reluctantly, first lingeringly filing her nails so as to give Bernard a palpitation or two, just as Gabriella (Italian, Alitalia, tight blue skirt) checks in.
Gretchen (German, Lufthansa, tight yellow skirt) is on the way.
Bernard, smugly clutching his airline timetable, is on top of it, aided – her motivation never entirely clear to me – by Bertha (Cat White), the maid he inherited with the flat.
As each girlfriend arrives, Bertha deftly, if grudgingly, changes the framed photo on the desk and prepares a suitable meal.
Gretchen, of course, likes sauerkraut. It’s what Germans eat.
And so poorly adapted are the digestive systems of other nations that poor Robert, when sampling it, and having found himself rather taken with the feisty Lufthansa representative, ends up on the floor clutching his stomach.
Director Steve Hewitt’s production looks good and the cast looks the part but after the very funny safety announcement at the start of the play, a People’s innovation, I couldn’t shake off a feeling of unease.
As comic entertainment, a comfortably established man duping women sent his way by a friendly male airline employee because they are “lonely” seems out of kilter with the times.
Bernard believes he has the “perfect example of polygamous family life”. In the real world, others who might have thought similarly back in the day are keeping their heads down.
That he gets a bit of a comeuppance didn’t wholly dispel my reservations about a play that’s very much of its time.
And my other main criticism is that those myriad doors should have been banging a whole lot quicker.
The programme says the show would end at about 9.50pm. Neither turbulence nor fog could be blamed for it touching down some 10 minutes later. A farce should be fast and furious.
Boeing Boeing is on until Saturday, October 5. Tickets from the People’s Theatre website.
A brilliant night, especially enjoyed Francesca Rombi’s performance whose Italian accent was second to none. All performers were excellent, rather strange that you e chosen to identify only the female performers by their items of clothing, however…
Absolutely loved this performance! What an incredible show. All of the actors and actresses gave an amazing performance.
I find it extremely hypocritical that you found the performance seixest, and then describe each female character with the words "tight skirts"