Don't Dress For Dinner, June 13, 2000

by Marc Camoletti, adapted by Ron Haydon

 at Crown Showroom until June 25, 2000

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. You need to see Don't Dress For Dinner to believe it. It is like a time capsule. Benny Hill still lives, I'm here to tell you!

In fact, perhaps he lived with the Carry On movie team and some old Panto dames and the mènage à trois wrote Don't Dress For Dinner. Are you getting the picture?

Lots of people laughed lots at the show. A Parisian man (Dennis Waterman) and his wife (Lisa Broadby) both hope to have a fling with their lovers (John English, Tottie Goldsmith) during a weekend at their country retreat which looks oddly like The Little House on the Prairie. The spunky little cook arrives (Sue Hodge) and everything gets silly.

Hodge, a UK TV comic, is a great clown with a rubber face and good timing. Waterman seems uncomfortable with farce while Broadby never wavers from one style of delivery. English has his moments but he is not believable as a sophisticated Parisian while Goldsmith is awkward in the bimbo role.

The script, adapted from a successful French play by Marc Camoletti, and the production directed by Peter Farago are a throwback to 60s UK TV comedies, 18 century French farce and the 15th century Italian Commedia del 'Arte.

From the 60s comedies, it borrows bimbos with big tits, tight bodices and short skirts, bad taste, sexist jokes, women as objects and sleazy middle aged men with too much money and a drink problem.

From French farce it takes - well, all of the above plus - double identity, secret rendezvous, illicit affairs, lies confusion and plenty of entrances and exits through five doors.

From the Italian Comedy comes (all of the above plus) lots of slapstick, spilt wine, drunkenness, falling over and a servant just like Harlequin  who is willing to do any deception for a franc or two hundred.

Oh, and there's pantomime acting too: work to the audience, pull faces, shout, laugh at your own jokes and hassle the audience if they don't laugh.

This is a very old-fashioned and frighteningly sexist piece of farce with uneven acting and loose direction.

If this is the style of comedy you like, please see it. Many of the audience laughed. I found it offensive and childish.

By Kate Herbert