STAGE REVIEWS : FRENCH FARCE REVIVAL RETAINS ITS GLOSSY SNAP

“A Little Hotel on the Side” delivers low-brow humor with a high-gloss finish in a very funny, very faithful revival at Rancho Santiago College. This classic French farce has survived 96 years, and its calculated silliness only seems to improve with age.

Extramarital trysts, shrewish wives, dimwitted cuckolds and overripe French maids were nothing new in farce, even in 1899, but Georges Feydeau managed to mold those mundane ingredients into an art form, throwing in mistaken identities, black eyes and police raids for good measure.

Director Richard Rossi uses John Mortimer’s uncluttered 1984 translation of the Feydeau bedroom farce (written with Maurice Desvallieres and originally titled “L’Hotel du Libre Echange” and retitled “Hotel Paradiso” in a 1956 translation).

The high jinks revolve around Benoit Pinglet, a Parisian building contractor who gets his daily exercise by bellowing insults at the architectural profession. Pinglet has eyes for his neighbor’s wife, Marcelle Paillardin, and he arranges a tryst at a questionable establishment called the Free Trade Hotel. All the expected mishaps quickly materialize--and that quickness is crucial. Rossi and his cast deliver a crisp production that never looks over its shoulder to make sure the joke has played. The often-intricate timing is expertly carried off.

At the center of all the blissful foolishness is the sure comic presence of Paul E. Rogers as Pinglet. He packs a big performance with sly little details, taking the audience into his confidence so skillfully that he manages to make this blustering schemer sympathetic.

His insufferable wife is played by Tally Briggs with snide self-righteousness (although it takes a stretch of the imagination to see how Briggs could merit the unflattering physical descriptions heaped on her by her stage husband and others).

There are other inspired performances by Debbi West, who nimbly avoids excess as the comely neighbor tempted by amorous adventure; Nelson Gilmore as her workaholic architect husband; Rebecca Norris as the voluptuous maid bent on seducing the neighbors’ naive nephew, and Stephen Grodt as that nerdy nephew. Grodt’s overnight transformation into a man of the world is effectively told with one prop (a confidently smoked cigarette) and one expression (a self-satisfied smile). Jim Brackenbury is comically exasperating as the unwanted house guest accompanied by four daughters.

The cast gets by nicely with quasi-Continental inflections, with the mystifying exception of the hotel porter, who speaks with a thick Cockney accent. The production has a lush period look, courtesy of Karen J. Weller’s costume designs and Christa Bartels’ set designs, which move from a luminescent French drawing room to a dank hotel, with assistance from Pam Rank’s lighting.

“A Little Hotel on the Side” will play through April 12 in Phillips Hall at Rancho Santiago College, West 17th and North Bristol streets, Santa Ana. Information: (714) 667-3163.