Don’t Dress For Dinner/Malvern Theatres

WRITER Marc Camoletti was at the peak of his creative powers when he wrote this multi-layered litany of lies, deceit and limitless subterfuge.

Camoletti is not particularly well-known in Britain, possibly due to the fact that he never appealed to our snobbish metro elites who have traditionally dictated public taste.

This late great exponent of the classic French farce was actually a comic genius who towered head and shoulders above lesser practitioners of the art. Yet he was, to some extent, the victim of intellectual apartheid.

And should you require further confirmation of his talent then my advice is set off for Malvern Theatres without further delay.

This dinner party of the damned contains all the right ingredients and it’s a veritable recipe for disaster. No wonder that everyone’s in a stew before very long.

All you have to do is overlook the regional English of friends Bernard (Chris Jordan) and Robert (Damian Williams) plus their respective love interests, who are about as French as a half-eaten bag of pork scratchings.

So although the Gallic genius for male infidelity is brutally anglicised, the right sour note is struck time and again as hypocrisy is exposed with all the regularity of the obligatory flash of stocking tops.

The verbal interplay between Bernard and Robert never flags as it becomes evermore ridiculous and desperate. But the men don’t hold all the cards because betrayed wife Jacqueline (Sara Crowe) slowly but surely shows her hand to reveal a clutch of aces.

Meanwhile, Suzanne (Stacey Victoria Bland) milks the Essex girl gag for all it’s worth in tandem with Geordie girl Suzette (Claire Sundin), who undergoes a dazzling metamorphosis as she emerges from a cook’s chrysalis to become a battered butterfly in a dress that she really should think twice about wearing.

Don’t Dress For Dinner is a riot of fun and hilarity, a rollercoaster of absurdity that will have you rolling in the aisles. It runs until Saturday (May 20).

John Phillpott