Don’t Dress for Dinner

What a laugh! What a hoot! What a play! Tugun’s current offering Don’t Dress for Dinner is a wonderful mix of humour, great performances and good direction.

Written by Marc Camoletti (he also wrote Boeing, Boeing), it is brim-full of comedy and slapstick, reminiscent of the good old days of farce. The scene is a refurbished barn conversion, two hours from Paris, with workable barn doors that seemed to be mastered by everyone except the home owner!

In only her third direction, Rianna has assembled a splendid cast of Bernard, Lachlan Mitcherson; Jacqueline, Chantel Elyse; Robert, Brock Honnery; Suzette, Jay-Louise Clark; Suzanne, Kate Paraskevos and Goerge, Chris Hawkins, who milk the script for humour whenever possible and they all do it with flair! Brock (playing Robert - has recently finished Year 12) yet he handled some very wordy explanations to the numerous delicate situations unfalteringly, as though he had been doing it all his life (???) and Jay-Louise (Suzette) was marvelous in her change of accents and physicality, with the ever increasing portrayals of the numerous characters thrust upon her.

All in all: a fabulous piece of theatre.

Brilliant!

Roger McKenzie

Photo: Dan Ryan