Marc Camoletti’s jet-setting farce has been circling the world since the 1960s and has just landed at Sonning to take on more passengers.

Marc Camoletti’s jet-setting farce has been circling the world since the 1960s and has just landed at Sonning to take on more passengers.

And, judging by last Thursday’s opening night, those passengers are set for a whirlwind flight. This comedy classic, written and set in the Swinging Sixties, is as funny and exuberant now as it was back in the day.

The story revolves around Bernard who lives in a swish Paris apartment and is engaged to three gorgeous air hostesses (‘flight attendants’ in today’s parlance) who work for different airlines.

With his diary at the ready and using timetables as his domestic bible, he juggles his lovelife so that ne’er the three shall meet. While two are in the air (one incoming, the other outgoing), the other is with Bernard making whoopee at the flat. In on the set-up is long-suffering maid Bertha who keeps the schedule running smoothly by changing photographs and cooking each girl’s national dish. So what’s to go wrong?

But bad weather and a new, speedier jetliner send timetables haywire and all three fiancées land in the flat on the same day. Unworldly schoolfriend Robert, who has turned up out of the blue, is tasked to keep the girls apart. And so, with lies upon lies and much coming and going and banging of doors, the fun begins….

Director Keith Myers’s classy cast showed excellent comic timing in this pacey romp. Serial philanderer Bernard was played with just the right amount of frenetic energy by Max Gell. He was kept on his toes with measured performances from his fiancées: American Gloria (TWA) a sparky Rebecca Witherington, Carla Freeman’s passionate Gabriella (Alitalia), and Erica Guyatt’s German larger-than-life dominatrix Gretchen (Lufthansa).

But the show stealers were without doubt Anita Graham’s deadpan delivery and shuffling stomp of put-upon maid Bertha, and Steven Blakeley, who must surely have studied mannerisms and body language at the temple of the late, great Leonard Rossiter to give flesh to the dumbfounded and flabbergasted Robert. A brilliantly-observed performance. Great stuff.

Carol Evans Boeing Boeing runs at The Mill at Sonning till August 1. Box office 0118 969 8000.