Andrew Haydon
posted 24 February 2007

On paper, this sort of thing really shouldn’t work. In theory a French, Sixties farce about a successful middle-aged architect with three air hostess fiancées, which trades heavily for its comedy on some frankly dubious sexual, national and regional stereotypes, should have been consigned to the dustbin of history by subsequent advances in social thinking and European integration. Somehow things haven’t quite worked out that way. In the flesh Matthew Warchus’s revival of Marc Camoletti’s Boeing Boeing is spectacularly, gloriously funny.

As with much farce, the plot is at once beautifully crafted and nigh-on irrelevant - serving only as a means to get paper-thin characters racing around the set in attitudes of increasing despair. If you’re looking for depth-of-feeling or insight into the human condition, this is the wrong place to come. The plot hinges on the fact that the louche Bernard (Roger Allam) has worked out that he can maintain engagements with three air hostesses from different airlines by using a detailed schedule of flight plans to prevent them from ever meeting, aided by his long-suffering maid Bertha, played by Frances de la Tour with a withering tone of camp cockney contempt - imagine Kenneth Williams doing EL Wisty. Inevitably, being a farce, a series of unforeseen events conspire to make this juggling act increasingly impossible as the play progresses. 

It is the performances that really make the evening, though. Mark Rylance is a revelation with his endearing, clownish portrayal of Bernard’s guileless friend from the provinces, Robert. God knows, we all knew he could act, but this sort of lower-brow, high-price, West End fare isn’t his usual stamping ground, and yet he fits perfectly into the piece, delivering a knockout performance, reminiscent of Stan Laurel’s genius for comic pathos, while displaying a grasp of stagecraft that is almost indecent with his constant audience-bound look of utter bewilderment and a perfectly-pitched Welsh accent

The other revelation is Tamzin Outhwaite as fiancée number one, Gloria. Despite her TV celebrity status, it turns out she’s more than capable of rising to the challenge of meeting her more theatrical co-stars’ talents. Her American accent (though Canadian, to my ears) is nigh-on flawless, she delivers precisely the amplified starlet turn needed for the role, while her evident glee in taking part at all is rather touching. Of her co-fiancées, Michelle Gomez’s fearsome German, Gretchen, is a hilarious conflation of exaggerated German stereotypes and funny accents (think Peter Sellars’s Clouseau), while Daisy Beaumont’s Italian Gabriella, lumbered with a thankless role comprising mostly simpering, holds her own. 

Beyond this stellar cast, there is not much to say; the unfussy, giant white set is elegant to the point of dull, the music sets the period nicely. An attempt to analyse the play’s socio-political import would look ludicrous. One could note the underlying theme of technological progress undermining Bernard’s caddish behaviour, with ever-faster aeroplanes threatening to bring his philandering to an end; or the interesting period details when, for example, Bernard explains that the airlines have effectively vetted his nominal fiancées for him in a manner which would cause no end of upset to current EU employment equality laws; or the way that this production’s almost pantomime level of campery makes objection to the potential sexism of the scenario impossible, and the cartoons of old-fashioned national stereotypes (pushy American women; nationalistic, dictatorial Germans; passionate, marriage-obsessed Italians) knowing enough to avoid unnecessary offence - but there’d be little point. 

Boeing- Boeing seeks to provide pure, undiluted escapist fun, painting a seductive portrait of an age when air travel was a luxury for the moneyed few, and achieves it in bucketloads. Although with top-price tickets costing as much as return flights to most of Europe do nowadays, how much you enjoy it may rather depend on your relationship to the better part of fifty quid.