This British version of a French boulevard farce takes place in a barn converted into handsome but un-Frenchified country-house. It's a few hours' train ride from Paris, where everyone talks with English accents. Owner Bernard (Michael Harrington, looking every inch a marital cheat), thinking his wife Jacqueline (attractive Beth Duda) will be off for a weekend with her mother, books a cook to make a dinner for his mistress to celebrate her birthday. When Jacqueline intercepts the booking confirmation call, the madness begins. To Bernard's lie that he'd be hosting friend Robert (squashy Blake Walton, full of exaggerated gestures), who's also Jacqueline's lover (whom she's not about to leave for her mother after all), is added the sham of cook Suzette being Robert's mistress and Bernard's mistress Suzanne being the cook(!). The classic humor has the audience in on the false identities, failed connections and elaborate ruses that deceive husband and wife.
Silly Suzette (wackily played by Elizabeth Palmer, with Cockney accent) keeps collecting money from the men as their impromptu explanations force her into roles as varied as mistress and country cousin. Amid the reliable if heavy handed bits of schtick (such as Walton's deft delving into drink and various swattings of imaginary insects),there's an unforgettable transformation of clunky Suzette in maid's uniform into sexy Suzette in stylish black tube dress. All that seems missing is a suspicious cook's husband. So, black-leather-jacketed Tom Yowarski supplies first a yowling, then a pussycat presence. The cast makes less use of a staircase and four doors than farcical characters usually do but expend so much energy on convoluted explanations, all seem to be continually on the move.
Karle H. Murdock, as the sultry mistress Suzanne, is a stunner even when wearing dabs of flour and smudges from the cooking she's forced to attempt. If everything seems unreal, so what? Don't Dress For Dinner promises nothing more than amusement, and that it delivers. A Variety critic wrote of the 1991 London premiere of Camoletti's "sheer synthetic hokum" that it's no longer the kind of draw for "parties from the Brit boondocks." But judging from the positively vociferous appreciation of Venice, Florida, after-diners at press night, I'd say it's going to magnetize many a crowd down southward.
