Review: BOEING BOEING at Turner Theater

By: Carolan Trbovich
Mar. 21, 2026

Photo by Samantha Hearn

Before the play begins, a bit of context is warranted for those who may know this title only from its cinematic incarnation. Boeing Boeing is a farce written by French playwright Marc Camoletti, with an English-language adaptation translated by Beverley Cross. It was first staged in London at The Apollo Theatre in 1962, eventually running for seven years.  It was so wildly popular that by 1991, the play was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most-performed French play throughout the world.  

The film Boeing Boeing became a 1965 American romantic comedy of misunderstandings and innuendos starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis. It was a lively, if imperfect, translation of the stage material to screen. The story is a bedroom farce without the sex; a prolonged tease rooted in the comedic angst of deception. The film has its charms, but the stage is where this storyline truly takes flight via the physical intimacy of a live audience, slamming doors echoing through the house, and the performer's choreographed chaos constantly moving throughout the play, in one room and out another. Boeing Boeing was born for the theater, and it is down the theater runway we go.