Comedic timing spot on in Modern Theater’s ‘Boeing Boeing’

The set of the Modern Theater Spokane’s production of “Boeing Boeing” has seven doors, and characters are constantly coming in and out and just barely missing one another. It’s a broad, silly comedy in which actors are required to be in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, and there’s an almost mathematical precision to the comedic timing.

“As far as farce goes, the more doors the better,” said the show’s director, Abbey Crawford. “If you have one person going in the door and one going out, and the doors slam at the same time, it’s that little ridiculous thing that makes it even funnier.”

“Boeing Boeing” premiered in France in 1960, and what was once a modern farce about romantic foibles is now a period comedy about the sexual mores of a bygone era.

It revolves around Bernard (played by Kyle Kahklen in the Modern production), an airline pilot who is engaged to three different women who are unaware the others exist. All three women are flight attendants, and Bernard arranges their visits so that none of their arrivals overlap. (He conveniently has framed photos of each of them in his Paris bachelor pad, which Bernard’s maid switches out depending on which woman is in town.)

His seemingly clever (and admittedly contemptible) ruse is complicated by the appearance of Robert (Henry McNulty), an old high school friend who comes to stay with Bernard. Robert becomes an accomplice in Bernard’s duplicitous romantic scheme, but he can’t keep track of which fiancée and is which, and pretty soon all three women are in Paris at the same time.

“Boeing Boeing” has been successfully revived many times since its debut, and it was adapted into a film in 1965 starring Tony Curtis as the playboy pilot and Jerry Lewis as the bumbling friend. Crawford said the show’s greatest asset is its wild comedy, and the script immediately grabbed her attention.

“I fell in love with it because I was laughing four pages in,” she said. “There wasn’t a moment where I thought it was going to be hard. It came pretty easily. … Watching rehearsals, I wait for certain parts, and I’ll still laugh like it’s the first time I’ve seen it.”

The cast only features six actors – Aubrey Shimek-Davis, Sarah Miller and Nichole Meyer play Bernard’s liaisons, and Callie McKinney-Cabe is Bernard’s tireless maid – and the compact nature of the show allows the plot to work itself into a frenzy. Crawford said her cast has to do most of the heavy lifting, and they’ve been more than up for the challenge.

“I’ve been gifted with a really talented cast,” Crawford said. “They make it so easy for me. I feel like the luckiest director on the face of the planet. They’re funny and their timing is fantastic.”