French Toast
Riverside Studios, London

ADAPTED by Sam Alexander from Fefe de Broadway, a 1979 comedy by Jean Poiret and delivered by the Gallic Gang, a small company dedicated to sharing French plays with British audiences, French Toast is getting its world premiere at the Riverside.
 
The premise of the play is promising: an English theatre director, Simon Monk (Che Walker), wants to stage a musical adaptation of a serious French play in England, but his principal financial backer, Jacqueline Bremont (Edith Vernes), a middle-aged Gallic actress of dubious and waning abilities, has decided she will have the lead role – and he can hardly refuse.
 
Once rehearsals get under way, Simon, who happens to have been an old-flame of Jacqueline, attempts to make life so miserable for her that she will quit, leaving the field open for his preferred casting choice.
 
While that set-up provides plenty of scope for some farcical goings on, as well as a plethora of jokes based around the mutual miscomprehension of the French and English, it largely falls flat in terms of laughs.
 
The gags come along at a rattling pace, but few of them hit home, and most that do elicit only chuckles rather than guffaws.
 
Were there more to laugh about, elements of creakiness elsewhere might be overlooked. But during the periods of quiet it becomes easier to focus on the faults, including the lack of a dynamic association between the five main characters, who orbit around each other instead of interacting.
 
Perhaps because of this disconnect there’s also a puzzling transformation in the attitudes of the characters to Jacqueline, whom they initially seem to dislike, and Simon, to whom they are at first sympathetic. As if by a flick of a switch, and for no discernible reason, those viewpoints turn around by 180 degrees in the later stages, until all is resolved with a clunky reconciliation between the two main protagonists.
 
None of that should really matter, as French Toast is just a bit of fun. But in the absence of a strong vein of comedy, it’s difficult not to focus on other matters. The play-within-a-play format offers possibilities, but Noises Off this is not.
 
Runs until October 26. Box Office: 020 8237 1000, riversidestudios.co.uk