Theater Review: ‘Don’t Dress for Dinner’ Doesn’t Fully Rise

Farce, so unsubtle in outcome, must be executed with some ineffable kind of magic to project both the absurdity of the situation and with just enough reality to elicit the desired outcome: belly laughs from an audience.

A hard task, both for playwright and actor. Unfortunately the Hampton Theatre Company’s production of Mark Camoletti’s “Don’t Dress for Dinner” doesn’t hit the mark enough to make this offering more than a middling success, a soufflé that doesn’t fully rise. And that’s even with the reliably strong casting one expects at the Quogue stage of Andrew Botsford, Rosemary Cline, Matthew Conlon, Rebecca Edana and Amanda Griemsmann. Newcomer Sam Yarabek adds to the froth.

For sure, the setup is preposterous enough. In a country house outside of Paris, the action takes place in the early 1990s. Assuming he will be alone for the weekend, Bernard (Mr. Botsford) has arranged a swell dinner for his mistress, Suzanne (Ms. Edana), and has hired a Cordon Bleu cook, Suzette (Ms. Griesmann) to prepare a special dinner. Bernard’s wife, Jacqueline (Ms. Cline) supposedly will be away visiting her mother.

Unexpectedly, Bernard’s buddy, Robert (Mr. Conlon), a businessman who regularly jets in and out of Hong Kong, turns up.

It turns out Robert is up to hanky-panky himself, for he and Jacqueline are having a torrid affair. Once she learns that Robert will be there for the weekend, she quickly cancels her visit to her mother.

Now what? Disaster looms for Bernard—unless he can convince a reluctant Robert to fake an affair with Bernard’s mistress, who will arrive momentarily when he and Jacqueline are out food shopping. But oops, the wrong “Suzi” shows up first and is immediately mistaken for the mistress.

Now the men must convince the real mistress, Suzanne, and the cook, Suzette, to play each other. But sexy Suzanne does not know velouté from velvet. Whip all this together with illogic gusto, a charming but mercenary Suzette, and you have a perfect recipe for a butter crème batch of laughter.

But you know how in the traditional recipe for butter crème, while it sounds simple on the printed page, it sometimes fails? Alas.

Though “Don’t Dress for Dinner” was a success when Robin Hawdon first translated it into English from the original French—it played in London for six years in the 1990s—by the time we get to the second act, the writing becomes tedious with long expository speeches as the men try to extract themselves from a sticky mess of their own making. Hilarity deflates.

Ms. Griesmann, as the cook Suzette, has the plumiest role—assuming three or four different characters before the evening is over—and she shines with the physical comedy her role demands. Yet her high-pitched French accent and her rapid-fire delivery sometime make it difficult to understand the words, and thus a joke may evaporate before it reaches you.

Teresa LeBrun’s choice of costumes for the women is magazine worthy—I’d love to have Ms. Cline’s outfits in my closet—and the bit where the cook’s outfit is transformed into a chic cocktail dress is deliciously whacky.

The set by the Marburys—mother Diana and son Sean—is a mishmash of comfortably old furniture that still manages to be country chic, as if they were cherry-picked—as well as upholstered yesterday—from English Country Antiques in Bridgehampton. How this team manages to pull such great sets together production after production is a marvel of its own.

Hamptons theatergoers within the last year were able to see another Camoletti farce, “Boeing, Boeing,” at the Southampton Cultural Center. While there are many amusing moments to be had in Quogue, overall this play disappoints and pales by comparison.

“Don’t Dress for Dinner” continues at Quogue Community Hall through June 10. Performances are Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. An additional matinée is planned on Saturday, June 9, at 2:30 p.m. For tickets, call 866-811-4111 or visit hamptontheatre.org.