Cast your nameplates to the Mediterranean breeze, and explain it to your liver later.

We all know that since Roman times, people have flocked to the south of France into indulge their sleazy side. After a while, you have to wonder if there will be no one left in the Riviera but the nefarious. So runs the theme in Cranbrook Community Theatre’s production of “Honestly Now,” currently on tap at the Studio/Stage Door in Cranbrook.

If Wallis Simpson had never met the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor), another couple famous for their south of France philanderings, such a one as Carlita Umbro could well be how Wallis turned out (consider Carlita’s nickname Queenie, and her fondness for Chinese dress. The name “Umbro” itself is Latin for “cast a shadow.” Go figure).

Carlita (played by Yohanna Quackenbush) is dallying on the Riviera with her “son” Hector (Brodie Peterson). If his “mother” were Wallis Simpson, Hector is the Artful Dodger fully grown. Out of the mouth of babes can come the most horrendous of lies.

I don’t think it’s revealing too much to say the pair are professional dissemblers, only interested in the rich pickings to be had from their fellow vacationers.

Carlita’s plan is to host a party, to get all these rich pickings in one room. The jet set may have lined up for a Wallis Simpson invitation, but poor Carlita gets only cancellations. Are these two rogues losing their touch? Carlita feels the despair of the spurned hostess-with-the mostest, while Hector attempts to still his panic by swilling cognac — anything bottled will do, really. Hector/Peterson’s renegade physicality is balanced by his Cary Grant intonations, with which he mutters his dissatisfaction at the state of affairs.

Enter the Americans — or the first of them, anyway — suspicious francophobic U.S. Senator Clayton (Brian Moran) and his wife Marigold (Susan Hanson). Added to the mix is the arrival of two rubes, cut from the classic rube cloth, Oscar and Holly Hemmings (Devan Jones and TracyMcGuire). It’s hard to say whom Senator Clayton dislikes more — the Frenchies, his over-attentive hostess, the volatile Hector, his wife, or these Democrat-voting hillbillies.

Thus we are all gathered in one room — sots that we are, we’re the only ones in town not able to make the Paul McCartney benefit concert on the beach. Lots of booze is needed to smooth over the differences, not to mention to fuel Carlita and Hector’s attempt to salvage something from this caper. Let Carlita’s party commence.

Through the uproar that ensues, Raoul (Sean Swinwood), the admirably brilliantined most French of waiters, maintains a Gallic calm, as befits a waiter/bartender. After all, as he tells Carlita, for whom he develops a fondness, “for you I am Pierre” (French for “rock”). Not so his colleague at the hotel, prim Nadine Marston (Jennifer Inglis), who is easily convinced to launch a new career and identity as an “adventuress.” Thus Nadine becomes adventuress Voletta Constanza (another pun — Voletta, from the French voleur, or thief). After all, when on the Riviera, do as the Rivierans do.

What’s left for us at the hotel? Speculation in swampland, priceless artifacts, empty rooms for the plundering, only a little gunplay, and capers that seem to have difficulty getting off the ground. And where are all these French coming from?

“Honestly Now,” written by Jack Sharkey, is directed by Terry Miller, who has displayed a facility for bringing out the quarrelsome aspects of the drawing room, where no one is who they seem.

This delightful comedy runs Oct. 28-31 and Nov. 4-7 at the Studio Stage/Door. Show times are at 8 p.m.