Theater Review—

A Fun French Farce Has Opened Town Players Season

By Julie Stern

While his wife Jacqueline goes away to spend a weekend with her mother, Bernard plans a cozy weekend with his mistress, Suzanne. In fact, because it is Suzanne’s birthday, he has arranged for a catering service to send a cordon bleu cook to create a special feast, that will go along very nicely with the 20,000 franc coat he bought her.

The news that his best friend Robert is arriving from South Africa doesn’t faze Bernard. After all, the converted French farmhouse in which he and Jacqueline live has plenty of bedrooms, and Robert is a sophisticated man of the world…

Unfortunately, just as she is about to leave, Jacqueline answers a phone call from the catering agency, and learns that her husband is not going to be all by himself eating the frozen tortellini she left for him. He explains that Robert is coming, and they were planning an old bachelors’ reunion.

What Bernard doesn’t know is that Robert is Jacqueline’s lover, and she has no intention of missing a chance to spend time with him. Telling her mother she has the flu, she announces that she is looking forward to spending time with their oldest friend.

Suzanne is due to arrive any moment. A desperate Bernard takes Jacqueline out to shop for groceries, telling Robert that he will have to pretend that Suzanne is his (Robert’s) mistress, and that he will have to explain the circumstances to her when she gets there.

Robert answers the door, reluctantly, and greets Suzette. She isn’t what he expected, and he doesn’t want to do this anyway, but he is Bernard’s best friend, and by the time Bernard and Jacqueline return, he introduces her as his mistress.

Bernard is aghast. He has never seen this person before. Jacqueline is outraged. Robert is betraying her. Suzette is bemused. She is willing to play any role the men want, but each additional detail costs another 200 francs…

Just then the doorbell rings again, and Suzanne arrives, chic and elegant in the 20,000 franc coat and a pouty expression. Since she can’t be Robert’s mistress, she will have to be introduced as the cook, whose name, of course, is Suzette…

Don’t Dress For Dinner, which opened on May 7 as the first production of Town Players of Newtwn’s 2004 season, was originally a French farce, a fact that becomes clear when a large part of the plot centers on the mess a Parisian model can make out of a cordon bleu menu…

Director Evelyne Thomas guides the group through their paces with a deft hand, and keeps the audience laughing continuously. Doug Miller is particularly good as the reluctant Robert, and Texas transplant Phyllis Gonzales is terrific as the imperturbable Suzette.

In their attempts to communicate behind Jacqueline’s back, Miller and Ron Malyszka  (as Bernard) are very funny. After all, it takes a great deal of body language to telegraph the message “This woman is not the one who is supposed to be your mistress…”

As Jacqueline, Suzanne Kinnear expresses her dudgeon highly, wielding a soda siphon with such lethal accuracy that her husband has to keep changing his clothes (hence the title).

The cast is rounded out with Erica O’ Connor (or her sister, Jillian Edo) in the role of  Suzanne,  and Ron Pawlikowski  doing a comic turn as the cook’s husband, when he comes to collect her at the end of the evening.

For those who like farce, this is entertaining and well done.

(Performances continue weekends until May 29, on Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday, May 23, at 2 pm. Tickets are $15, $12 for the matinee. Contact the theater at 270-9144.)