“I’ll do it… but it isn’t easy!”
Note the seven doors in the set for Boeing Boeing!
“I’ll do it… but it isn’t easy!”
Bertha in Marc Camoletti’s Boeing Boeing
In August, Roger and I went on a brief play pilgrimage to North Carolina. My last blog featured musings on the musical we saw at Parkway Playhouse where I had worked 50 years ago. This writing concerns Boeing Boeing, the piece we saw at Flat Rock Playhouse in the Hendersonville area. In 1991, the play was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most performed French play throughout the world. But though I had heard of, I had never attended or designed this play, so I decided to see it “cold,” without looking up a single thing about it.
Later I found that Boeing Boeing, written by Marc Camoletti, premiered on December 10, 1960 — when I was 10 years old — at Comédie-Caumartin, in Paris. A critic has said the play “all boils down to juggling timetables and a reliable maid who never forgets to change the photographs.” Set in the 1960s, the action revolves around a bachelor named Bernard who has a flat in Paris and three airline stewardesses all engaged to him without knowing about each other.
Now, even a dull-witted playgoer could see that Bernard’s life is going to fall apart at some point. Soon after his friend Robert surprises him with a visit from America, ever-expanding difficulties such as weather and a recently developed speedier Boeing jet throw his planning into mass confusion. When all three stewardesses arrive at the apartment one after another, hilarity begins its reign.
I had always wanted to attend Look Homeward, Angel at Flat Rock back when they performed that Thomas Wolfe story annually from 1970 - 1979. With Asheville, the site of the show, being just up the road from the playhouse, I thought their production would make a delightful excursion. But, it never materialized. To paraphrase Bertha, I wanted to do it, but it wasn’t easy!
When I taught theatre at Samford University, I would yearly take part in the Southeastern Theatre Conference meetings and would always encounter Robroy Farquhar, the now deceased founder of Flat Rock Playhouse. His history is fascinating and you can read more at: https://www.flatrocktogether.com/good-news/robroy-part-one. Robroy (besides having an intriguing name) was a small, spirited man with a mustache who spoke with an English accent and seemed shrouded in mystery to me. So when Roger bought us tickets to Flat Rock Playhouse for my Christmas present last year, I anticipated the trip all spring, and was excited to finally arrive on its campus.
Boeing Boeing is a French play, so of course it is brimming with double meanings — or entendres as the French would say. As I sat holding my program before the play even started, I realized that the title itself is a play on words calling to mind both the jet airliner AND the springy frolic of this risqué comedy. As one critic noted, “Neither plane nor sex appear onstage, though they’re the driving forces of the characters’ doing and undoing, and who’s colliding into whom behind the many slamming doors is the source of great tension and humor.”
Another thing I noticed before the first act started was that there were seven — yes, seven — doors in the set. That detail delighted me, and shouted, “Farce! Farce!” Staging such a comedy requires at least three doors, and the more the better. Much funny business in any farce revolves around one character exiting one door, just missing another entering a different portal, and such physical humor and perfect timing keeps the audience in stitches. The doors have to be solidly built, because they must be slammed. I am sure the designer and technical crew used Bertha’s very words when they heard about this door assignment: “I’ll do it… but it isn’t easy!”
In reading the online history of the Playhouse, I felt empathy for Mr. Farquhar and his undying desire to have a permanent theatre home in the Flat Rock area. In the summer of 1940, his Vagabond Players, establishing the first professional summer stock theatre in North Carolina, moved into a converted building, The Old Mill Playhouse. I had to laugh at the remembrance that the cast ignored an occasional bat swooping overhead during performances. At our performance of Boeing Boeing, the show stopped briefly because a bat was dive bombing the stage! That’s the first time that experience has happened to me.
“I’ll do it… but it isn’t easy!” Do you ever use this expression? So many of us get stuck in daily routines. We let habits rule our lives: eating the same foods over and over, driving the same way to our destinations, sitting on the couch watching the same old shows. Customs and routines are fine. They make life easy for us so that most of our days go smoothly.
But what if today, you zero in on one thing, that book you long to read, that picture you want to paint, that dance you hope to learn, that person you hunger to meet, that language you wish to know? What if you say, “This isn’t going to be easy. But I’m going to do it!”
Think of how you will grow, how your mind will expand, how your emotions will be stimulated, how your body will gain strength, how your spirit will soar! Choosing to do a hard thing isn’t always comfortable, but it is challenging. And through that trial, you will find out your strengths and your weaknesses. You will learn more about yourself. You will find more and more possibilities. You will have unknown doors opening for you. Or maybe slamming. Why not find a farce in your city and buy tickets to it today?