Boeing Boeing, Comedy Theatre, London

For those concerned that the West End was suffering from a dearth of "serious" plays, the news that a trio of Olivier Award-winning classical actors - Frances de la Tour, Roger Allam and Mark Rylance - had decided to star in a revival of the 1960s French comedy Boeing Boeing must have seemed like the last straw. Marc Camoletti's play ran in France for 19 years, broke comedy records with 2,000 performances in the West End - and closed on Broadway after 21 performances.

This sexual comedy of errors revolves around Bernard, a Parisian architect who successfully juggles the affections and attentions of three gorgeous live-in fiancées. His secret? They are all air hostesses. Bernard can map their globetrotting schedules to the minute, ensuring - with a little help from a hefty flight timetable and his loyal, put-upon maid Bertha - that they never overlap. When his wide-eyed friend Robert arrives in the big city from the country, Bernard smugly seizes on the opportunity to show off his "international harem".

Polygamy, he declares, is the "ideal life", his meticulous system allowing him to have American pancakes for breakfast with one beloved, lunch on saltimbocca alla Romana with another and squeeze in frankfurters and sauerkraut for dinner. But the advent of the faster Super Boeing aeroplane means that each of his women has more time on her hands, throwing his "geometric" schedule awry.

As the curtain rises, it is abundantly clear that we are in the land of farce. Rob Howell's pristine white set curves seductively around the stage, its array of seven identical doors ready to be hidden behind and slammed shut, and the occasional splashes of three colours reminding us of Bernard's triple life. Not particularly subtle, then, but this is the home of stock characters. There is Gloria (Tamzin Outhwaite), the over-sexed Californian dolly-bird with confused pretensions to being a feminist, Gabriella (Daisy Beaumont), the fiery, feisty Italian, and Gretchen (Michelle Gomez), the alarmingly intense German.

Outhwaite and Beaumont are both pleasingly pert in their roles but it is Gomez who stands out. As those familiar with her batty performance as Staff Liaison Officer Sue White in the comedy series Green Wing will know, Gomez is not afraid to push the boundaries, vocally and physically, rolling her Teutonic "r"s with guttural zeal, flashing her eyes and contorting her body into all manner of undignified comic poses.

In humorous contrast to these brightly suited bimbos is de la Tour's lugubrious Bertha. All in black, down to her rubber gloves, she only has to walk on stage with her hangdog expression for the theatre to fall about. The deadpan delivery of her lines is equally successful. Allam has moments of nimble physical comedy but struggles fully to capture the humour in Bernard's situation as it escalates to its inevitable climax. It is Rylance, as his Welsh-accented innocent chum, who steals the show. From the moment he arrives, fresh-faced, from the provinces, blinking with disbelief at Bernard's real-life erotic fantasy, he is the comic heart of the play. By the end, festooned with airline handbags, his mouth smeared with the lipstick of various hostesses, he is clearly having the time of his life, as is a whooping audience in the stalls. It is a joy to behold.

Boeing Boeing, as flimsy as the negligées in which the hostesses are often seen wafting about on stage, is lucky to be served by such superior acting talents. Is there any need for a revival of this farce with its dinosaur attitudes to the female sex - in which air hostesses are held up as paragons of womanhood - and lazy, xenophobic stereotyping? Probably not. But if you have to do it, I can't think of a better way.

To 28 April (08700 606 637)