THEATER REVIEW : ‘Hotel Paradiso,’ With Amenities

The plays of Georges Feydeau are like fine French wine: easy to take care of. Don’t jolt the bottle and damage the goods; lay it on its side so the cork doesn’t dry out.

Feydeau requires care too. Play him absolutely straight, with honesty and integrity, and the humor spreads delightfully like the wine’s bouquet.

Director Ashley Carr Jr., in his staging of the Feydeau (with Maurice Desvallieres) farce “Hotel Paradiso,” knows the style and pitfalls, for the most part. Many of his players, in this University Players production at Cal State Long Beach, are very serious in their intent, and very funny, and his timing of the intricate farce is excellent.

In those odd moments when this snappy production falls flat, the fault is in allowing actors to demonstrate that they think they’re funny. Punctured dignity is what makes Feydeau work. He also has allowed Naomi Yoshida Rodriguez, whose costume designs are generally just right for the play, to clothe some of the peripheral characters in what can only be described as clown costumes. They look silly and destroy the tone created in the revival’s more naturalistic moments.

The actors closest to the style and intent are the three principals. Grant Baciocco as Boniface uses physical comedy expertly, and his timing is superb as the bored husband daring a night at the hotel with his best friend’s wife. Marvette Williams as his prey, Marcelle Cot, also treats her role naturalistically and is often very funny because of it. As her husband, Cot, Tim Petrocchi has a slightly pompous that air works beautifully in the Feydeau plan, and he knows the value of comic reserve.

Avi Brand is Cot’s studious and sort of naive nephew Maxime, and Bryce Cahn is Boniface’s friend Martin, who stutters badly when it rains and looks amusingly like George Bernard Shaw. They are both on the right track, with just enough physical comedy to keep up with Carr’s bright tempos.

*

Vincent Aniceto and Ken Burdick are the hotel manager and his porter Georges, respectively, and though they’re both inclined to go overboard a bit, they’re not too far from the mark. Boniface’s nasty wife, Angelique, is another story in the loud, blaring, one-note performance of Stephanie Marie Valsamides, and a lack of truth and reality also hampers the performance of Ellen D. Williams as the maid, Victoire, who drags Maxime not too unwillingly to the hotel.

The important second act of a French farce, here with bounding and leaping between the rooms of the hotel, with the requisite banging of doors and mistaken identities, is a charmer and marred only by rather mature company members playing Martin’s four obnoxious daughters in those clown costumes and acting more like romping monkeys than the covertly evil little tykes they should be. They are as out of place as Mark Abel’s Gallicly grand sound design is in.

* “Hotel Paradiso,” University Theatre, Cal State Long Beach, 7th Street and West Campus Drive, Long Beach. Tuesday and Wednesday, 6 p.m.; Thursday though Saturday, 8 p.m.; matinee Dec. 2, 2 p.m. Ends Dec. 2. $10. (310) 985-5526. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Grant Baciocco: Boniface

Marvette Williams: Marcelle

Tim Petrocchi: Cot

Bryce Cahn: Martin

Avi Brand: Maxime

Vincent Aniceto: Anniello

Ken Burdick: Georges

Stephanie Marie Valsamides: Angelique

Ellen D. Williams: Victoire

A Cal State Long Beach University Theatre production of a farce by Georges Feydeau and Maurice Desvallieres, presented by the University Players, directed by Ashley Carr Jr. Scenic design: Chontelle Gray. Costume design: Naomi Yoshida Rodriguez. Lighting design: Sean Patrick Small. Sound design: Mark Abel. Makeup design: Liisa Fenech. Stage manager: John Zamora.