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Community Players Takes Farce To New Heights

John Atherton
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Flickr via Creative Commons

The new season at Community Players kicks off with a comedy that asks, 'Coffee, tea or me?'  It's Boeing, Boeing, a classic French farce from the swinging '60's.  The show has a preview Thursday, Sept. 1, with the opening on Friday the 2nd.  The show runs through Sept. 11.

Actor Dave Krostal plays Bernard, a lothario architect with three flight attendant fiancees that he carefully maneuvers in and out of his apartment, timing their comings and goings so that the three never know of each others' existence. Playing one of the air hostesses, German Gretchen, is Cristen Monson. 

 Krostol declared outright that the women in the audience will, at first, dislike his character. "He's a cad," Monson agreed, although her character doesn't know about it -- yet. "She just can't live without him."

The joy of the farce, Monson said, is in watching Bernard's well-ordered life fall apart on stage. "Humans love that.  We love to see things fall apart."

"The beauty of the farce comes in with Bernard believing nothing could possibly go wrong with his arrangement," said Krostal.

Although the play was written 50 years ago, Monson said it has aged well, especially the character of Bernard. "The concept of the player stringing along three different women that don't know about each other," she laughed.  "Lots hasn't changed since then."

Reporter, content producer and former All Things Considered host, Laura Kennedy is a native of the Midwest who occasionally affects an English accent just for the heck of it. Related to two U.S. presidents, Kennedy appalled her family by going into show business.