It’s pointless to even try to summarize “Don’t Dress for Dinner,” a sex farce more tangled than a plate of spaghetti. Actually, there isn’t so much a story as a pileup of contrived lies, mistaken identities, random coincidences and physical entanglements.
Yet despite all this frantic activity, this Roundabout show is a slog.
The 1985 play has a decent pedigree: It’s by French playwright Marc Camoletti, whose “Boeing-Boeing” had a successful run on Broadway four years ago.
That revival was stylish and fleet-footed. “Don’t Dress for Dinner” tries to tap-dance in concrete shoes. The play itself isn’t as good as “Boeing-Boeing,” and John Tillinger’s production fails to find a rhythm.
And rhythm is essential in a show keeping many crazy balls in the air.
You’ve got a married man (Adam James) with a “tarty” mistress (Jennifer Tilly) and a bachelor best friend (Ben Daniels, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”). The hoity-toity wife (the fine Patricia Kalember) isn’t above an illicit roll in the hay. A stern cook (Spencer Kayden) is passed off variously as a girlfriend, a niece, a model and an actress.
The only reason these schemes work is because everybody behaves idiotically and speaks in vague sentences that carry several meanings.
And oh, the jokes! A visitor is introduced with the warning that “she won’t be what she seems.”
“She’s a transvestite?” the wife asks.
Wah waaah.
“Don’t Dress for Dinner” belongs to the tradition of French “boulevard” theater, which is based on infidelity, deceit and slamming doors. To succeed, boulevard must be played with such physical exuberance and unabashed mugging that the audience doesn’t have the opportunity to ponder how ridiculous it all is.
Here, there’s plenty of time between laughs for the mind to wander: These people are kind of shady. John Lee Beatty’s French-country-style set is ugly. Comedy isn’t Daniels’ strong point. Will Tilly — whose line readings aren’t funny ha-ha but funny strange — fall out of her overloaded bra?
Happily, James and Kayden light things up.
The first has a great rubber-limbed agility — his happy footwork when his character thinks the coast is clear for nookie is a hoot.
Back on Broadway for the first time since playing Little Sally in “Urinetown,” Kayden is extra dry with a twist, and steals the evening.
You keep wishing she’d get more stage time . . . in another show.