Don’t Dress for Dinner
Austin Playhouse, through Dec. 23 Running Time: 2 hrs
You may think of adultery as a serious matter. This is understandable. I myself am inclined to agree. French playwright Marc Camoletti, however, has a decidedly different take on the matter. His Don’t Dress for Dinner looks at the considerably lighter side of an English couple’s attempts at infidelity.
Dinner is a British adaptation of the original French work and was a West End sensation. While the characters are predominantly English, the setting and plot stay French. Bernard, upper class and middle-aged, is stuck in a Madonna-and-the-Whore/have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too conundrum. He wants to keep his wife, Jacqueline, and his mistress, Parisian socialite Suzanne. Rather than seeing this as a moral dilemma, Bernard tackles it as a logistical problem. If he can get his wife out of the house for the weekend, create an alibi with his best friend, Robert, invite the mistress over …
Unfortunately, he forgets to calculate into the equation that Robert and Jacqueline are secret lovers. Funny how he should miss that. With his wife staying at home under false pretenses to rendezvous with her lover, Bernard decides to circumvent the truth to get Suzanne safely under his roof rather than abort the mission: Suzanne will moonlight as Robert’s mistress. Needless to say, this doesn’t go over well with Jacqueline.
Desperate to gain “satisfaction,” Dinner‘s characters lie and double-lie and erase previous lies in order to stay on top of the who’s-on-first layers of false relationships. Throw in a ditzy cook and her jealous husband, and the tense confusion among characters grows even greater. Like a guitar string being wound tighter and tighter, Dinner‘s plot gets increasingly harebrained as characters reach for convenient lies instead of the twisted truth.
This mounting tension is where Dinner really delivers, as Austin Playhouse Artistic Director Don Toner has put together a cast plenty capable of the poise and exaggerated emotions necessary for a farce. Janet Hurley Kimlicko and David Stahl are wonderful as the adulterous couple bent on keeping both lovers and spouses in the fold. Hurley Kimlicko’s wicked evil eyes and facial contortions are particularly delightful, and Ben Wolfe is a riot in his cameo as jealous husband George. Actually, all of the actors are eminently likable in their roles. Toner probably could have made the production snootier or cattier, but the show remains warm, bubbly, and playful throughout and contains its share of good old belly laughs.
While the release at the end of Dinner doesn’t have as much of a splash as expected, it stays with the loose and entertaining tone of the show. Dinner revels in its shenanigans and cover-ups, its cartoonish characters, and its charm to win over the audience. So check your moral baggage at the door, grab a glass of Burgundy, and enjoy the farcical fun of Don’t Dress for Dinner.
This article appears in November 30 • 2007.