By STU CLAMPITT
Carmel Community Players (CCP) is staging a classic comedy this month at the Cat, 254 Veterans Way, Carmel.
Boeing Boeing is a 1960’s French comedy about a Parisian player named Bernard, who has Italian, German, and American fiancées. Each woman is an airline hostess with frequent layovers. Bernard keeps “one up, one down, and one pending” until unexpected schedule changes bring all three to Paris, and Bernard’s apartment, at the same time.
Bernard is played by Kirk Donlan, who has only been in two previous plays, but has a strong acting background in the improv world.
“I spent a number of years doing improv comedy with a group called IndyProv and that was my gateway into theater, “Donlan said. “I had some friends through improv who were also doing theater and I expressed some interest. A part had come up in a play through Carmel Community Players called Failure to Zig-Zag. When I was in that one it was a last-minute thing. They asked me if I could fill in for someone who had to drop out, so I jumped into that. It was a really good experience. I did another play after that, and this is my third play.”
Donlan said he sees his character, Bernard, as someone who thinks he has a good thing going where he has multiple women in his life at the same time who don’t know about each other because they are always traveling.
“He feels like he’s living in the bachelor’s paradise,” Donlan said. “He thinks he has the best of both worlds, but of course, through the course of the play he gets his comeuppance when they all arrive at the same time. He’s working overtime to try to keep his ruse going, which is obviously not sustainable.”
Director Dan Scharbrough told The Reporter he saw the Broadway revival of Boeing Boeing in 2008 and just loved the show.
“It is right in the era of those late 50s and early 60s wacky zany comedies like Come Blow Your Horn with Lee J. Cobb and Frank Sinatra, That Touch of Mink with Doris Day and Cary Grant, Lover Come Back with Rock Hudson, Doris Day and Tony Randall,” Scharbrough said. “About 10 or 12 years ago Renée Zellweger made a film kind of in that style called Down With Love. It’s like those. It bounces around. It’s fast. It’s quick. It’s a little bit of an outlandish concept.”
Scharbrough got his start in theater in high school. In college, while attending the University of Indianapolis, he was a theater major on a football scholarship.
“I started doing community theater in ’79,” Scharbrough said. “For 30 years I was a member of Actors’ Equity and worked at Beef and Boards and IRT [Indiana Repertory Theatre] and did some stuff out of town with some theaters. I’ve been around a while.”
Scharbrough has been on stage with CCP and directed elsewhere, but this is the first time he has directed with them.
The director said the biggest challenge in this production has been the short rehearsal schedule.
“Our first audition was July 26 and we open Sept. 10,” Scharbrough said. “That’s only six weeks, which is a good two to four weeks less than any other community theater show, but these actors have done a great job. They have really worked their tails off and it shows. If we had a set over at the Cat, we could probably open tonight, they’re doing that well.”
You can see Boeing Boeing at the Cat, 254 Veterans Way, Carmel, Sept. 10-19. Tickets and more info are available at CarmelPlayers.org.