Boeing Boeing first took off in London way back in 1962. Things were different then – it was considered very sexy and glamourous to be an air hostess and the West End stage was awash with rompy farces.

There was a strong tradition of farce going back to the Aldwych Theatre in the 1920s and 30s and continuing with Brian Rix at the Whitehall. By the sixties it was all to do with girls in negligees exiting through one door just as a second emerged from another clad only in a skimpy towel. Boeing Boeing was one of those and had all the right ingredients tossed together with the finesse of a Jamie Oliver cookery demonstration. There were seven doors on stage, three air hostesses, two randy men and a French maid (ooh la la).

The plot (plot?) involved the suave, sophisticated, but predominantly randy, Bernard juggling three jet-setting (oh yes, jet airliners were considered sexy too, hence the title of the piece) girls with varying degrees of skirt length in his Paris flat as they stopped over. It was all down to the timetables apparently. Well, as you can imagine, a great deal of mirth and hilarity ensued as the timetables went askew and they all finished up in the flat at the same time – quelle horreur, sacre bleu, la plume de ma tante etc etc.

This was very much a multi-national farce. We had a German (Lufthansa) girl, an American (TWA) and French one (Air France). Bernard and his visiting friend from Aix (en Provence not la Chappelle as we were repeatedly reminded) were French as was the aforementioned maid (ooh la la). Now, the three girls all had convincing and appropriate accents but the maid (ooh la la) was cockney, Bernard’s friend was Yorkshire and Bernard somewhere in between. Still, it all added to the fun.

When I said earlier that Bernard was suave and sophisticated I must confess to being a little sarcastic. He wasn’t, nor was his friend Robert. Far from looking as if they were stylish, urbane Parisian playboys they behaved more like barrow boys in the Marché Mouffetard and looked as though their clothes came from Primark rather than Jaeger or Pierre Cardin. But hey, this was a farce not a BBC 2 documentary. The most consistantly good thing in the play was Anita Graham as Bertha, the ooh la la maid – not the sexiest but certainly the funniest.

The three girls were charming and all appeared at one point or another scantily clad (at least by 60’s standards) and the American girl had an impossibly short skirt (even for the sixties). It put me in mind of a story I heard once about an air hostess who wore an inflatable bra (this was long before the days of breast implants). Her bust size was influenced by air pressure – the higher they went, the bigger it became. But I digress.

Boeing Boeing is, apparently, the most performed French play in the world. Molière and Feydeau please take note, this is how you write a French farce. It was all very amusing but not, I suspect, always for the right reasons. The set was very basic and wobbled every time one of the seven doors was opened or closed. It was all good, end-of-the-pier, weekly rep stuff. I worked in rep way back when and I think I would have enjoyed being in Boeing Boeing. But as I said, times were different then. ★★☆☆☆  Michael Hasted