Jean Kerr's, "Lunch Hour," takes place in the present and is set in the hip and swinging Hamptons—but don't give such outward signs of trendiness another thought. Mrs. Kerr has written just the sort of old-fashioned comedy that one expects from the author of "Mary, Mary": a romantic entertainment in which the characters are as civilized and charming as the stylish couples who populated Broadway drawing rooms a generation ago. And why not? There's nothing wrong with the old forms when they're in loving hands. As written by Mrs. Kerr,… "Lunch Hour" is a very slight, very warm and most amusing diversion….

[The main characters are] Carrie Sachs and Oliver DeVreck, summer people who meet as they discover that their spouses are off having an affair. "Lunch Hour" is about what happens when Carrie and Oliver decide to fight fire with smoke: They stage a mock affair of their own, hoping that jealousy will lure their wandering partners back home. At her best, Mrs. Kerr is as much concerned with the growth of her characters as with the machinations of her farcical, Coward-ish plot. As the immature Carrie and Oliver carry out their charade, they inevitably learn more about themselves and each other than they had bargained for.

Both characters are emotionally needy….

While we wait for Carrie and Oliver to let down their defenses in Act I, the playwright sends wisecracks ricocheting about the oceanfront DeVreck living room…. The jokes are hit-or-miss, and some of them (especially those dealing with diets and sex) are noticeably tired. Once Mrs. Kerr starts to dig into her people, the writing deepens without any loss of comic drive. Indeed, the touching first scene of Act II lifts "Lunch Hour" to another level entirely.

It's a scene in which Oliver and Carrie act out their fictive, lunch hour affair so that they can keep their phony story straight with their spouses later on. As these two lonely people pretend to be smooching in an imaginary French restaurant, they suddenly find it impossible to separate their real and invented feelings. Through it all, Mrs. Kerr delicately interweaves laughter and romance until she achieves a giddy mood of emotional disorientation worthy of Philip Barry. It's only appropriate that Oliver and Carrie soon take a moonlight swim that's exactly parallel to the one in Barry's "The Philadelphia Story."