Untrue adventures

LONG before James Frey was caught profaning the holy ground of Oprah’s Book Club with his fraudulent memoir “A Million Little Pieces,” there was an even more flamboyant case of autobiographical deception. Louis de Rougemont, a Victorian-era character who serialized his credibility-defying escapades in the South Pacific to the delight of the English, briefly enjoyed superstar status -- that is, until doubts about his supposed piggyback rides on giant sea turtles and a fearsome encounter with a killer octopus exposed a few of the larger cracks in his completely crackpot chronicle.

In “Shipwrecked! An Entertainment -- The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself),” playwright Donald Margulies sets sail on the high seas of this forgotten figure’s ludicrous yarn-spinning, where calm currents of truth are routinely interrupted by tidal waves of rollicking fantasy. This intermittently charming bauble of a play, which had its world premiere Friday at South Coast Repertory under the game direction of Bart DeLorenzo, takes a purely theatrical approach to high jinks that are as farfetched as they are far-flung.

The setting is a late 19th century English stage upon which Louis (Gregory Itzin), in a flurry of motion behind a music stand, doesn’t just regale us with his fanciful exploits but performs them with all the vocal flourishes of a radio ham. He is assisted by two actors (Melody Butiu and Michael Daniel Cassady), who play with an almost vaudevillian broadness the full roster of eccentric characters who crop up on an Australian pearl hunt that turns into an unplanned tour of the tiny islands dotting the Coral Sea. And though descriptions of cannibals, exotic marine creatures and colorful native rituals abound, there’s no mistaking this trumped-up travelogue for a National Geographic spread. Fact-checking, rest assured, wasn’t part of this unreliable narrator’s tool kit.

Narrow escapes are the main order of business. From the strewn wreckage of a capsized boat, Louis paddles his way to a sandbar oasis with the aid of his ever loyal and uncannily human dog, Bruno (animated with tongue-slobbering affection by Cassady). Eventually, he meets a trio of aborigines in need of rescue, and after a ticklish run-in with a hostile tribe that capriciously makes him its chief rather than gobbling him up, marries Yamba, the grateful woman he bowled over with his heroics. But after he spends 30 years (give or take a couple of decades) of wizening in the scorching sun with a spouse he likes but doesn’t have much in common with, rainy England -- and a hot shower -- irresistibly lure him home again.

Back in England, Louis’ elderly mother -- near the end of her life but still able to call a con a con -- tells him to offer his anecdotes to World Wide Magazine, whose motto is “Truth is stranger than fiction.” The rest of the play charts his meteoric rise and disgraced fall as a national celebrity. Along the way, the play proffers a diagnosis that chalks up the literary sham to an overdose of “Robinson Crusoe.”

Jauntily conceived and daubed with a few interesting ideas about the impulse behind creative nonfiction, “Shipwrecked” provides a diversion from the dull earnestness of workaday reality. Yet this is minor Margulies -- a one-act that lends the impression of the playwright taking a breather from more serious efforts. Written with a lighter touch than is evident in “Sight Unseen,” “The Model Apartment” and his Pulitzer-winning “Dinner With Friends,” the play has a sketch-comedy casualness that at times seems dashed together.

Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate the depth of concern here. There’s something meaningful at stake in all the silliness, questions about the relationship of art and artifice to reality that Oscar Wilde, particularly in his brilliant essays (“The Decay of Lying,” “The Truth of Masks”), never grew tired of.

Fortunately, DeLorenzo’s staging finds just the note of playfulness to honor both the substance and spirit of Margulies’ work. The production is also lovely to look at, thanks to Keith E. Mitchell’s re-creation of an old trunk-filled English theater, Rand Ryan’s lyrical lighting and Christine Marie’s shadow design projections, which conjure a literal ocean of surprise.

The chief asset, though, is the central performance of Itzin, who has the rumbling voice and showy gestures to capture Louis’ histrionic nature. Yet his portrayal also lets us understand that this is someone who craves public attention less out of prancing arrogance than a desire to escape oblivion. Louis will give the crowd anything it wants as long as he can be reassured that his life matters, that it’s not utterly discardable.

Margulies, blessed with as much sympathy as humor, suggests that there’s a little granite truth behind the tall tales fabricated for fun. We concoct stories, even crazy autobiographical ones, not simply to bask momentarily in the spotlight -- we do it to prove that we really exist.

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charles.mcnulty@latimes.com

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‘Shipwrecked! An Entertainment’

Where: South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 7:45 Tuesdays through Sundays, plus 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays

Ends: Oct. 14

Price: $20 to $62

Contact: (714) 708-5555

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes