Farce is fast, furious and funny

A tricky moment for Robert (Ben Porter) when Gloria (Laura Doddington) goes through “his” bag.

Boeing Boeing, Oldham Coliseum, to June 6

LIKE a jumbo jet trundling down the runway, there are early indicators in this revival of the ancient Marc Camoletti farce that the show might never get off the ground.

Like most farce, this tale of a man so “in love” with women he has three stewardess-fiancees, kept apart only by careful timetabling, has an awful lot of build up to the action.

And as in a lot of farce, the tendency here has been to go for laughs in the first 30 minutes where very few actually exist: a forced laugh-count from Bernard (Robin Simpson), which suggests this revival might not be as welcome as we would hope. But trust in Oldham guest director Robin Herford: early fears count for little.

The show opens up with the arrival of old school pal Robert (Ben Porter) who — apart from looking a bit too young to have been Bernard’s school pal — peps up the show no end.

Like a young Jim Dale, all clumsy limbs and nervous energy, Porter takes over the responsibility for the laughter and immediately wins us over. The fun is almost continuous thereafter.

What is most striking about this very long-running comedy — supposedly the most popular French play ever — is how mysoginistic it is towards women.

Written in the Sixties, it portrays the three stewardesses — forthright American Gloria (Laura Doddington), sexy Italian Gabriella (Maeve Larkin) and coy German Gretchen (Sarah Lawrie) — as little more than playthings, to be chosen and discarded at Lothario Bernard’s whim. Truly, the play could not be written now.

But that’s modern sensibilities for you: get hung up on the gender politics and you will never appreciate the show for what it is: a brilliantly timed exercise in keeping people apart. At high speed.

As all three girls eventually arrive at Bernard’s Paris flat, Bernard and Robert share a frantic task to keep them apart, Robert succumbing to Gretchen’s charm along the way.

It’s all fast, furious and very funny — and Camoletti redeems himself by showing us things don’t entirely go Bernard’s way, since all three girls get what they want.

Along for the ride is Gilly Tompkins as Bernard’s complicit housekeeper Bertha — who provides plenty of laughs of her own and even gets a pay rise out of Bernard, who clearly isn’t as smart as he believed himself to be.