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'Don’t Dress for Dinner' is what it is: fun theater

By Candace Chaney Contributing Theater Critic

Sharon Sikorski and Graeme Hart are in Don't Dress for Dinner. Photo by Larry Neuzel | Studio Players

• IF YOU GO: Don't Dress for Dinner, presented by Studio Players
• Director returns for 'Dinner'

Marc Camoletti’s Don’t Dress for Dinner, a play adapted from the French by Robin Hawdon and chosen to open Studio Players’ 2008-09 season, is a playful farce about a dinner party gone wrong. Really wrong.

The evening begins normal enough, even dull. Husband and wife Bernard (played by Randy Hall) and Jacqueline (Lisa Welch) are at their home in the French countryside talking about Jacqueline’s weekend trip to visit her mother, a discussion that reveals the duo’s ho-hum marriage. Clearly dubious about Bernard’s ability to take care of himself for two days, Jacqueline seems on the fence about going to her mother’s at all. Can Bernard manage without her? Is he capable of defrosting a frozen meal? The first few minutes of observing this domestic tedium make one wonder what, if anything, of interest might happen in this play.

Then the phone rings. Jacqueline answers and learns that Bernard has hired a cook (Sharon Sikorski) for the evening. When she confronts him, he admits that he invited one of his oldest friends, Robert (Graeme Hart), for an evening of drinks, dinner and nostalgic fun, a kind of reenactment of his bachelor days. When she hears this, Jacqueline immediately cancels her plans and decides to stay. Turns out, Robert is secretly her lover and she is hoping to steal some time alone with him. It also turns out that Robert’s visit is an alibi for Bernard’s secret plans —n evening with his own young actress/model mistress (Allie Darden). In a panic over the prospect of his girlfriend meeting his wife, Bernard concocts a desperate, rash plan with the Robert, who reluctantly agrees to pretend to be Robert’s mistress’s lover.

Then the doorbell rings. Robert mistakes the cook for the mistress and convinces her to pretend to be his lover. Then the mistress arrives and she must pretend to be the cook. And so on. The evening comically unfolds to reveal more and more layers of deception and mistaken identity, with jealousies, desires and revenge-driven witty barbs flying out of control. Absurd, silly and sometimes bordering on slapstick, the show quickly gathers steam, becoming a speeding train wreck of social disaster by the second act.

Director Gary McCormick has crafted a solid show with a refreshing lack of pretense. It is what it is — pure, ridiculous hilarity — and no more. His decision to pay homage to the French origins of the play while retaining the very British dialogue of this adaptation is perhaps this production’s greatest risk. Sometimes it works handily and other times it is a distraction that strains the cohesive flow of the performances. The play is set in France, but the actors offer us British accents, except for Suzanne, Bernard’s mistress, whose accent is thickly (and well executed) French. Patti Heying’s dialect coaching is clearly reflected in the actors’ crisply defined accents. Consistency is key, though, and the occasional lapses of accents that I saw on Friday evening make a case for dropping the jolly goods altogether. On the other hand, British banter is hard to beat, so perhaps a good tightening up is all that is called for.

Bright spots in this production include an ensemble cast that share a warm, whimsical chemistry, which contagiously spread through the sold-out crowd at the Carriage House Theater. In particular, the women stand out in this performance. Welch, Sikorski and Darden sink their teeth into their comedic roles; their timing and execution of the play’s whirlwind events are impressive. The men fare well, too. Hall and Hart’s few private moments of shared panic and scheming are nail-bitingly entertaining. Kody Kiser is hilarious in a surprising role.

Also impressive are Ellen Hellard and Jan Kinstle’s costume designs. As the characters devolve from sober to sopping drunk, and as the evening passes from dinner to bedtime, the characters’ wardrobes evolves dramatically, humorously and tellingly. As the title suggests, costumes and disguises, whether literal or not, are a key component of this farce’s plot and Hellard and Kinstle do a good job underscoring that connection.

Overall, Don’t Dress for Dinner is not a masterpiece, but it isn’t meant to be. It’s appeal is that it is a simple pleasure: an evening of randy fun and wry humor. No more, no less.