'Dinner' gives Carol Stream director appetite for farces

Director Bill Barry, Jr., was never really a fan of farces.

“I was a bit of a snob,” admits the Carol Stream resident.

Then he caught a production of “Don't Dress for Dinner,” and his whole opinion of farces changed.

“This thing grabbed me from the first few moments of the play and took me the whole way,” Barry says.

So much so that Barry is now directing a production of that play for St. Charles' Steel Beam Theatre.

Marc Camoletti's “Don't Dress for Dinner,” Barry says, contains all the usual trappings of a farce: mistaken identity, door slamming and a couple of hidden love affairs. But Barry says this play, about a philandering husband who sets up a rendezvous with his mistress in his country house, is packed with “great wordplay and plot twists that are just amazing.”

Now in his late 50s, Barry has been directing since he was a college student, studying speech and theater at the College of DuPage in the 1970s. He later transferred to Northern Illinois University, where he graduated in 1978.

He has been acting and directing in small theaters in the suburbs ever since, except for a brief hiatus he took so he could play daddy chauffeur to his kids, who were also into theater. They are in their 20s now, and still keep a toe in the theater world.

“My wife is an actor, too,” Barry says. “We met when we were doing ‘Macbeth' at the College of DuPage. I played one of the smaller roles, Angus, and she was one of the three witches.”

Barry's devotion to theater is strong, but he has never given up his day job, as manager of Inglot Electronics in Chicago.

Barry directs a wide variety of plays, but he admits to having a special fondness for comedies. “I have directed ‘Arsenic and Old Lace,' ‘The Odd Couple' and ‘Picasso at the Lapin Agile.'” Barry says. “I do comedies. This is my first farce.”

“Don't Dress for Dinner”

“Don't Dress for Dinner”

Location: Steel Beam Theatre, 111 W. Main St., St. Charles, <a href="http://steelbeamtheatre.com">steelbeamtheatre.com</a> or (630) 587-8521.

Showtimes: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. Opens Friday, Jan. 14, and runs through Sunday, Feb. 6.

Tickets: $#3625, $ว for students and seniors.