Some folks love farce. Others think farce belongs in a category with mimes, interactive theater and root canals: things we know exist but wouldn’t jump to experience. With a few exceptions – Noises Off, the work of Molière, the plays of Alan Ayckbourn – I’m with the latter group.

Boeing-Boeing, a 1960 French farce by Marc Camoletti, was translated into English in 1962 by Beverley Cross. Its first London run lasted seven years – they do love farce in England, hence the career of Ray Cooney – though the play’s 1965 Broadway run lasted just 23 performances.

The farce about an architect juggling three flight attendant fiancées fared far better in New York in 2008, when it won the Tony Award as best revival. It’s that version that Davie’s Promethean Theatre is presenting at the campus of Nova Southeastern University.

The play’s comedic bad boy is Bernard (Matthew William Chizever), an American living in Paris who is perpetually entertaining one of the gals who fly in and out of his life.

His romantic deceptions work because each girlfriend flies a different international route for a different airline, so no two are in Paris at the same time. And he has the assistance of Bertha (Sally Bondi), the live-in help who changes pillows, pictures and menus according to which fiancée is in residence.

Bernard’s beauties are Gloria (Lauren Butler), a bossy American who flies for TWA; Gabriella (Monica Lynne Herrera), a fiery Alitalia stewardess; and Gretchen (Rachel Lomax), a Lufthansa gal. Things get complicated when Bernard’s old school friend Robert (Mark Duncan) enters the hectic mix, then turn much worse when faster planes and uncooperative weather play havoc with Bernard’s meticulous schedule.

Boeing-Boeing plays out pretty much as you’d expect. First Bernard experiences near misses with the women arriving unexpectedly. Then the gals, heretofore ignorant of each other, wind up in the apartment at the same time. “Hilarity” and slamming doors ensue.

Director Margaret Ledford tries mightily to keep the play airborne on Kelly Berry’s swingin’ ‘60s set. The actors push hard to achieve the physical comedy farce requires, but too much of the movement looks strained or uncomfortable rather than artfully choreographed. Too often the performers bellow their lines, making you wonder how it is that a suspicious woman on the other side of a bedroom door can fail to hear all that hollering.

Chizever and Bondi, two very good actors, are out of their element here. His Bernard comes off as a blustering bull in a china shop, and her Bertha (sporting a pitiful French accent) is more bored beatnik than wily housekeeper. Butler’s Gloria and Herrera’s Gabriella are so over-the-top obnoxious that their “charms” remain thoroughly hidden. Only the lanky Lomax and milquetoast Duncan make their odd-couple characters work.