Comedy, farce and fun are what Christmas shows are about, and among this year's offerings are the 1960s farce Boeing Boeing at the Fortune, and Crossroads, two comic operettas staged by Opera Otago. Charmian Smith reports.
An implausible plot, a set full of doors, a comedy duo and precise timing resulting in lots of laughs go to make up a good farce, according to Fortune Theatre artistic director Lara Macgregor.
The French farce Boeing Boeing, written in the 1960s by Marc Camoletti, has been enjoying revivals in London and New York recently and opens at the Fortune Theatre on Saturday. Bernard, a Paris architect, is engaged to three different women, German, French and American, all air hostesses.
He and Robert, his country friend who has probably never had a girlfriend in his life, make up a classic comedy duo. Bertha, the long-suffering housekeeper ties everything together - she has the great one-liners that keep everything on track, Macgregor says.
Air hostesses were like the supermodels of the day and Bernard manages to juggle his three fiancées, each of whom believes she is the one and only, because their flight schedules do not coincide. In the apartment, Bertha changes photographs, paintings, cushions, and the menu for the arrival of each. However, the introduction of the new Boeing speeds everything up and the girls' arrivals start to overlap.
The fun sets in when one girl is in the main bedroom, and the next one arrives and has to be diverted into one of the spare rooms, then the third one arrives and they have to put her in the bathroom.
The set, as in classic farce, has seven doors and Bernard, Robert and Bertha have to try to juggle everyone so the girls don't meet. Things get even trickier when the Air France hostess finds a Lufthansa bag in the room.
''The girls are the calm within the storm, so no matter what freneticism is going on on the stage, they have to remain completely oblivious to the circumstances, which is quite challenging to do, plus keep your cues coming in on time.
''Simple as the story is, to get it right and be so precise with the moves is quite painstaking, to pick it apart and put it together again. It's not about back story and psychological things, it's about precision and timing and getting the casting right, so the comedy duo work smoothly together because that informs everything,'' Macgregor said.
The German air hostess is Wagneresque, one minute completely passionate and the next completely dominating and frightening. The American eats the most revolting food, such as molasses on pancakes, and she's on the hunt for a man with money. She wants to marry and settle down and that's what she's testing the waters for with Bernard, she said.
Finally, because it's a comedy, there's a happy ending - happy in 1960s terms. Not a huge amount has changed since then, but there are one or two moments in the play when you might cringe and find it a bit hard to swallow these days, she said.
''It's a completely implausible situation that we have to buy into as an audience; it's complete stupidity, but it's an opportunity not to think and to laugh a lot.''
Two short comic operettas you'll come out whistling tunes from is Opera Otago's Christmas show, Crossroads, presented not only in Dunedin but also in Mosgiel and Gore, and, next year, touring Central Otago.
Mr Polly at the Potwell Inn, by John Drummond and Jeremy Commons, tells the story of Mr Polly, a shopkeeper who decides to tie all his belongings in a bundle, put a stick through it and go ''walkabout''.
He finds himself strolling along the River Thames, comes across the Potwell Inn and pauses there for something to eat. The landlady offers him a temporary job, which he takes, but soon realises her nephew Jim is terrorising her, taking money from the till and making her do what he wants, Prof Drummond said.
''Mr Polly is at a crossroads and has to decide whether he's going to stay and do something about this or whether he should just walk away, which is what he's been doing for the last while. So his decision, to stay and confront Jim leads to a very amusing confrontation, and of course everything ends happily. It's a comedy; there's no choice. Things work out fine for everybody except Jim.''
Mr Polly was first staged about 10 years ago, the first of several collaborations between Prof Drummond and librettist Jeremy Commons.
The second operetta is Jacques Offenbach's Ticket 66, about a young couple travelling to meet the girl's sister in Strasbourg. They meet a pedlar who has the results of a lottery and it appears the young man has the winning ticket. He gets excited, borrows money from the pedlar and sets himself up with fine clothes.
The girl is not pleased because he's changing and she's being left out. Eventually it is discovered that the young man has been holding the ticket upside down, the winner was 99, and all is not what it seems.
Offenbach wrote some 40 small comic operas in Paris in the 1850s and '60s, which influenced Gilbert and Sullivan, according to Prof Drummond.
''They are lots of fun and you can see where Gilbert and Sullivan got their ideas from. They were very influential on G&S because their plots are quite witty and the music is very lighthearted.''
Jonathan (Jon) Drummond, Prof Drummond's son, is the musical director and says he's had tunes from both works stuck in his head for the past few weeks.
''Offenbach is similar to Gilbert and Sullivan, light and bubbly. In a way the music is relatively harmless. It supports all the comedy that's happening on stage, whereas Mr Polly is quite a different sound. Dad uses quite a different set of harmony and the music is more complex. You come out whistling tunes from both of them,'' he said.
Jon has been musical director for several shows this year and plans to go to Germany to study conducting later next year.
''It's a kind of deja vu for me, because I was Jon's age in England when I started working with professional opera singers, so it's nice to see the next generation coming through and doing the same job,'' Prof Drummond said.
The operettas feature three young singers who have worked with New Zealand Opera and other groups: Matt Landreth, Bianca Andrew and Andrew Grenon take the three roles in both operettas.
Early next year the show will be revived with a different cast of young singers to tour Otago and Southland.
It's getting more difficult to get an amateur chorus together to stage a traditional opera these days, as they found with the recent Really Authentic Gilbert and Sullivan project, Prof Drummond said.
''People are just so busy and work patterns have changed. It's a different world from what it was 30 years ago. Opera Otago sees itself as being a niche professional opera company, tending to do small-scale works with very good young singers and giving young singers opportunities to perform. That's how Opera Otago sees its future and I certainly think it's the way to go, doing new works whenever possible and touring,'' he said.
It still has opportunities for people to sing opera choruses and put on shows with extracts from operas with the Mayfair Opera Ensemble.
See it
• Boeing Boeing, written by Marc Camoletti, translated by Beverley Cross and directed by Lara Macgregor, plays at the Fortune Theatre from November 16 to December 14. It features Kelly Hocking, Yvette Parsons, Elena Stejko, Amy Straker, Tom Trevella and Phil Vaughan.
• Crossroads: Musical comedies of chance, produced by Opera Otago and directed by John Drummond, opens at Mosgiel Coronation Hall tomorrow for a two-night season, then plays at St James Theatre, Gore, on November 20 and Mayfair Theatre Dunedin on November 22 and 23. All performances are at 7.30pm.
