Theater: American Airlines / 227 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10036
Synopsis:
Marc Camoletti's Don't Dress for Dinner is the wildly funny sequel to the Broadway hit Boeing-Boeing. Bernard's plans for a romantic rendezvous with his mistress are complete with a gourmet caterer and an alibi courtesy of his friend, Robert. But when Bernard's wife learns that Robert will be visiting for the weekend, she decides to stay in town for a surprise tryst of her own... setting the stage for a collision course of hidden identities and outrageous infidelities. The cook is Suzette, the lover is Suzanne, the friend is bewildered, the wife is suspicious, the husband is losing his mind and everyone is guaranteed a good time at this hilarious romp through the French countryside.
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April 26, 2012: Can I blame Mark Rylance? For what, you are wondering. For “Don’t Dress for Dinner,” a revival of a wheezy French sex farce by Marc Camoletti that opened on Broadway on Thursday night at the American Airlines Theater.
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April 26, 2012: I hate to single out a performer as especially lame in this revival of Marc Camoletti’s French sex farce (adapted by Robin Hawdon), but the soda siphon is really subpar. The classic comedy prop ought to deliver a short, sharp and forceful jet of carbonated water to the victim’s face (or groin). But in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s tepid Don’t Dress for Dinner, the bottle spurts halfheartedly when Jacqueline (Patricia Kalember) sprays her philandering husband, Bernard (Adam James), and later douses Robert (Ben Daniels), with whom she’s having her own affair. Perhaps the cocktail accessory has been deflated by the rest of the cast, who hardly muster greater comic zip.
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April 26, 2012: Maybe there's some confusion about what's really going on at "Don't Dress for Dinner." It's really quite simple. Just listen to one character named Robert explain it to his lover, who is angry her husband Bernie is cheating on her.
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April 26, 2012: The accepted wisdom for decades was that British theatergoers love to titter their way through sex farces while Broadway audiences tend to resist, as illustrated by the disastrous 1965 New York run of French playwright Marc Camoletti’s Euro-smash Boeing-Boeing. But the success here of that play’s inspired 2008 revival was an exception to the rule, paving the way for Roundabout Theatre Company to stage Camoletti’s sequel of sorts, Don’t Dress for Dinner. John Tillinger’s tidily upholstered production assembles a likeable cast with proficient physical-comedy skills, but the overlong play’s pileup of sticky misunderstandings becomes repetitive.
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April 26, 2012: Mistaken identities are the nub of Marc Camoletti's often hilarious farce Don't Dress for Dinner. The main sources of confusion, and the highlights of director John Tillinger's slick new production, are the two interlopers to the country home of Bernard (Adam James) and his wife, Jacqueline (Patricia Kalember). Naturally, they have confusingly similar names. Suzanne, played with a well-earned sense of comic entitlement by Jennifer Tilly, is Bernard's buxom, bubble-headed mistress, arriving for a weekend tryst while Jacqueline is supposedly away to visit her mother.
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