Florida Studio Theatre's 'Don't Dress for Dinner' serves up a frenetic farce

Marc Camoletti and Robin Hawdon’s “Don’t Dress for Dinner” plays a farcical game of liar’s poker at Florida Studio Theatre. The play’s lying lovers keep losing. The simple truth would set them free. But they stay in the game with insanely complicated lies.

Their lying game unfolds at a family cabin in the woods. Bernard (Gil Brady) is vacationing with his wife, Jacqueline (Katharine McLeod). He’d rather vacation with his mistress, Suzanne (Lily Kren). 

Conveniently, Jacqueline's visiting her mother over the weekend. Bernard’s made some well-laid plans for hanky-panky while she’s gone. Exit wife; enter mistress! To set the mood, Bernard hired Suzette (Ellen Grace Diehl) — a mobile caterer who’ll cook up a romantic gourmet meal. 

His best friend Robert (Jack Berenholtz) will also pop by to provide an alibi for the catering bill. Inconveniently, Jacqueline is Robert’s mistress. Once she knows he’s arriving, she stays put for some hanky-panky of her own. 

Bernard’s perfect plan is shot to pieces. A frenetic farrago of mistaken identity, costume swaps, heavy drinking, lies, evasions, excuses and pratfalls ensues. Along with a dinner from hell.

Farce runs on intricate clockwork. If it feels mechanical, nobody laughs. Be artificially natural! Tough job. Director Nancy Rominger somehow pulls it off. Her comic timing is perfect. But the action always feels spontaneous. The laughs don’t stop.

The actors never wink at the audience. They stay in character — and always keep a straight face while spouting preposterous balderdash.

Brady’s Bernard has a refined, upper-class gentility. His character can be charming and flirtatious. But he’s entitled, self-satisfied and smug — and overestimates his cunning. He thinks he’s a puppet master pulling the strings. But he gets tangled in his baroque chicanery. (And feels like he’s the victim when he does.) 

Berenholtz’ Robert is Bernard’s reluctant accomplice. He looks and acts like Mr. Nice Guy. But he’s really a dirty rotten scoundrel. He’s cheating with his best friend’s wife, after all. 

Kren’s Suzanne is Bernard’s mistress. She’s a chic, sexy, well-paid fashion model. Suzanne has many talents — but she’s no cook. But she pretends to be, so Jacqueline won’t think Robert has a second mistress.

Diehl’s Suzette is the savvy chef who’s roped into pretending to be Bernard’s mistress. She sees it as a business opportunity — and gets paid for every fib she supports. 

Like Oliver Douglas in “Green Acres,” her no-nonsense character is the farce’s anchor to sanity. It’s a mad, mad world — but Suzette’s the exception. Will Harrell puts in a comic turn as her husband — a gruff rustic who’d cheerfully murder any lothario he suspected of touching his wife. Happily, he doesn’t.

Isabel A. and Moriah Curley-Clay’s set is a lovingly detailed, converted barn — a warm, haute bourgeoisie retreat of stone walls and wooden floors. Rotary phones tell you it’s still the Swinging Sixties.

 Kathleen Geldard’s costumes aptly capture the era’s class distinctions. Suzanne and Suzette’s quick changes into sexy, suggestive outfits are à propos to the French farce tradition. Which the playwright happily reinvented …

Camoletti’s playwriting career took flight with “Boeing Boeing,” a comedy of complex sexual shenanigans. “Don’t Dress for Dinner” finds comedy in the complicated lies resulting from horny hijinks. (Robin Hawdon “freely” translated it from the French original. But it’s true to the original premise.) The playwright’s not repeating himself. And he doesn’t follow the standard farcical template.

“Don’t Dress for Dinner” is not by the numbers. A typical farce gets laughs with sliding doors, romps down hallways and hiding under beds. There’s plenty of physical comedy here. 

But most of the comedy’s verbal. Here, the characters slide through mazes of lies, misdirection and double-talk. Their lies breed and multiply. The web of tangled coverups overload the memory capacity of the merely human mind. Even a smart human like Robert can’t keep up …

“We can't blame Bernard for having a lover who was pretending to be my lover so you wouldn't know she was his lover, while all the time I was your lover pretending to be her lover so that he wouldn't know you had a lover! Especially when his real lover was pretending to be ... to be ...”

Whew!

As Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” If the characters had taken his advice, they wouldn’t have made such a fine mess. No cheating schemes. No dinner from hell. The evening would’ve gone smoothly. But that’s not funny at all.

That’s the truth.