BWW Review: The Mint Digs Up 1930 French Farce, DONOGOO

It’s to the great credit of the spirited company of actors, projection designers Roger Hanna and Price Johnson and French playwright Jules Romains himself, that the Mint Theater Company’s new production of Donogoo always feels like something wildly funny is just about to happen. A zany farce from 1930 satirizing European colonialism, Romains’ “comedy in 23 tableaux” has all the makings of a vehicle that might have been driven by the brothers Ritz or Marx, but translator/director Gus Kaikkonen’s text is sadly void of solid punch lines and his staging is similarly zing-less. Which is a shame, because the juicy plot seems richly ripe for hilarity. James Riordan, the only member of the baker’s dozen of player who doesn’t play multiple roles, opens the evening as the depressed and suicidal Lamendin, who is interrupted from his attempt to jump from Paris’ Moselle Bridge by a chance meeting with old pal Benin (Mitch Greenberg).