STAGE REVIEW : ‘A Nightingale Sang’ Rings With Nostalgia at Old Globe

Calling Vera Lynn.

The British singer, whose distinctive voice and mellow songs saw thousands of Britons through the blitz and bombs of World War II and who became the unofficial emblem of an era, is about all that’s missing from Craig Noel’s tender production of “And a Nightingale Sang” at the Old Globe.

It’s nostalgia time.

C. P. Taylor’s wartime reminiscence, which opened Thursday, will remind older viewers of such World War II film sagas as Noel Coward’s “In Which We Serve” or the throbbing Vivien Leigh-Robert Taylor starrer, “Waterloo Bridge”: bittersweetness with an edge.

The edge here is a solid-gold ensemble of Old Globe familiars, headed by Kandis Chappell (who would brighten a recitation of the Yellow Pages on a rainy day) and including the superior character skills of Katherine McGrath, Mitchell Edmonds, Jonathan McMurtry and Lynne Griffin.

The staging is beautifully calibrated by Noel and lovingly detailed by scenic designer Kent Dorsey, Jeff Ladman’s vivid sound score, Lewis Brown’s period-perfect costumes and Peter Maradudin’s pools of light.

Dorsey cleverly sets his working-class interior within a cut-out of the house--complete with chimney tops--backed by a sky made up of headlines of the period.

Would that such stylishness all around served a less predictable script. For all of Taylor’s fondness, “Nightingale” is sitcom with a touch of soap, a well-made comedy that chronicles the eccentricities of a spunky working-class family in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne during the war years, long on individual quirks and short on surprises.

We follow the fortunes of the Stott family mostly through the eyes and voice of the lame older daughter, Helen (Chappell). The madcap household (what do they work at?) consists of Helen’s ever-cheerful if quite enigmatic father, George (Edmonds), who seems to live and develop spontaneous political theories at his piano; Helen’s giddy younger sister, Joyce (Griffin), who can’t decide if she wants to marry soldier-boy Eric (James Lancaster) or stay married to him after the fact; Helen’s itinerant grandfather Andie, who mopes around, punctuating the comedy with truisms as he sashays in and out of their lives (McMurtry in one of his more delicious old-man takes)--and Helen’s “Mam” Peggy (McGrath), a devoutly hysterical churchwoman born to worry about the lot of them.

No such play would be complete without a taciturn stranger (played with tenderness and just enough mystery by Alan Brooks), entering the household as Eric’s buddy and invading Helen’s plucky heart. It’s a bittersweet romance with foreseeable turns of events. Which is precisely the problem.

Despite its individually touching funny or spirited scenes (there’s no lack of spirit in this production), “Nightingale” as a play sails too smoothly from point A to point Z.

With the exception of Helen--and, arguably, of her lover--the characters neither grow nor reveal much more of themselves by the end than they did at the start.

This complacency shrinks the show to the level of feel-good theater--palliative panorama. Nothing requires that we participate--or be moved. We watch, smile, laugh, go home, forget. Might as well turn on the telly.

Nice. But the Old Globe usually demands better and more from its audience. And should.

At the Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts in Balboa Park, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p . m. (except May 23-24); Sundays and June 5, 7 p.m.; matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2. Ends June 10. $20-$27.50; (619) 239-2255.