'Don't Dress for Dinner' a hilarious, definite do

 Full disclosure: We are not predisposed toward farce. It’s genetic, a stubborn strand of melancholia embedded in the DNA along with an industrial-strength tolerance for 198 proof potato whiskey. Tragedy we get. Slamming doors, bawdy hijinx and laff-riot prat falls? Like Rocky Mountain Oysters, we can appreciate it when it’s done well, but it’s not to our taste.

So imagine our surprise when two minutes into “Don’t Dress for Dinner” we found ourselves positively giddy with the certainty that surely few things are more entertaining than a Boston cream pie to the face or a banana peel-induced sprawl. Not that anyone actually goes schnozz-down into a pie plate during playwright Marc Camoletti’s sublimely silly confection. But that’s the mood of the thing. How much fun is “Don’t Dress For Dinner”? Imagine playing bumper cars after inhaling  a tank full o' nitrous oxide. That’s how much fun. (Not, of course, that we have ever done any such thing ourselves.)

Part of our difficulty with farce is the premise upon which the entire genre is based: From Moliere to Joe Orton, farces demand the audience believe that that everybody on stage is an idiot. If any of the characters in any given farce actually stopped for a moment to apply the most rudimentary logic reasoning to the matters at hand, the show would be over. That makes for a huge challenge: How to present a room full of people acting like stoopid idjits without making the audience roll its collective eyes at the numbing inanity of it all? Staggering stupidity may be funny in a five-minute sketch. In a two-hour play, it can become as unbearable as nails on a blackboard. Indeed, dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

Which brings us to director John Tillinger, who orchestrates the lickety-split-second lunacy of “Don’t Dress” (adapted from the French with joyful verve by Robin Hawdon) with a maestro’s touch.

The romp begins as husband and wife Bernard (Mark Harelik) and Jacqueline (Patricia Kalember) succeed in waylaying each other’s plans for a weekend of extra-marital rolls in the hay in their converted French farmhouse.Thinking the wife will be out of town, Bernard has invited his sex kitten of a mistress Suzanne (Jamie Morgan) for a few days of champagne and sex. He’s even hired a Cordon Bleu caterer, Suzette (Spencer Kayden) to prepare a romantic dinner. For good measure, Bernard has also invited his best friend Robert (Jeffrey Donovan) down for the weekend.

Mais bien sur, Bernard isn’t the only one in his marriage fudging on the whole monogamy thing. Jacqueline is embroiled in a torrid affair with – but of course! – Robert. When Jacqueline decides to say home for the weekend, the former farm house becomes the funny farm.

Consider the spread sheet: Two spouses, two best friends, two illicit lovers, a model mistress and a gourmet chef (both of whom are called Suzy), all trying to finagle various and sundry in corpus delicti assignations in the old piggery. It’s “Dangerous Liaisons” only with champagne bubbles instead of malice.

Watching the various permutations of love, lust and lunacy play out on stage is akin to watching Blue Footed Boobies embark on their ridiculously intricate – and ridiculous looking - mating dance. Everybody’s hoping around, swinging right, left, and center in loopier and loopier configurations, all in the name of the Great God of Sex. Lord, what fools these mortals are when trying to get to get laid.

Down to the last Freudian slip (and provocative slip) the ensemble is a crackerjack team of inspired zanies, their collective command of farce’s all-important machine-gun-rapid timing a joy to behold.

“Don’t Dress”? Please do.

Don’t Dress for Dinner” is running through March  31 at the Royal George Theatre, 1641 N. Halsted, Chicago. Tickets are $49.50 to $59.50. For tickets, call 312/988-9000. For more information, click here or go to www.dontdressfordinner.com.