by Cari Lynn Pace

A Parisian bachelor, armed with only an airline flight schedule and a disapproving maid, successfully juggles simultaneous romances with three gorgeous flight attendants. It’s a setup for international disaster when an American buddy visits and endeavors to learn relationships from the master.

Marc Camoletti’s Boeing Boeing, directed by Justin Smith, is old school farce, hitting the rules of monogamous romances below the belt, but it’s a laugh worth enjoying even today.

Santa Rosa Junior College pulls experienced actors from their program to blend in with the fledgling students. Bernard, a demanding role played by Jay Soto, is a languid Lothario who makes promises he doesn’t intend to keep. Jake McFadden, as Bernard’s arriving buddy Robert, is a veteran of SRJC stage shows. He handles his role with amazing skill and flexibility, shifting from a Wisconsin dullard to a clever Romeo with ease. He is smitten with one of Bernard’s harem trio, the Lufthansa flight attendant Gretchen. Gretchen, masterfully commanded by Ally Liberty, isn’t buying his advances. She and Robert have the most amusing repartee in the show. Their dialog bounces between sensual and dismissive, an argumentative reckoning resolved only in the show’s final closure.

Robert observes Bernard’s techniques when Bernard first hustles TWA flight hostess Gloria out of the apartment, lest she miss her flight. Shay Rudy channels Bernard’s New York lover with an on-and-off accent and a charming lack of time. She’s barely out the door when Gabriella, a flight hostess from Alitalia Airlines, arrives with an energetical insistence of her devotion and an Italian accent, charmingly enacted by Victoria Cunha.

The anchor in this madcap comedy is Bernard’s maid Berthe, enacted by Hannah Fain. Fain has a rapid-fire French accent and an equally French disdain for the goings-on with her boss Monsieur Bernard. It’s regrettable that many of her quick quips and those of the flight hostesses were lost as they spoke their accented dialogue quite rapidly with no audio amplification.

The SRJC is hosting the show in their smaller Studio Theatre where the stage features a stunning living room set designed by Kasey Vannoy with Peyton Whiteside. The costumes of the airline hostesses designed by Jessica Colley-Michell were vividly colored and believable for the era, lending credibility to the international intrigue.

Playing now through March 8 in the Burbank Auditorium Studio Theatre on the campus of Santa Rosa Junior College, 1501 Medocino Ave., Santa Rosa.

Click HERE for more information and tickets.

Photos by Thomas Chown

Cari Lynn Pace is a long-time Bay Area theatre critic whose reviews were regularly featured in the Marinscope Community Newspapers.