STAGE REVIEW : ‘The Enchanted’ at Chapman College

The writing of French novelist and dramatist Jean Giraudoux has been described as being to literature what Impressionism is to painting. Critics of his era (Giraudoux prospered in the 1920s and ‘30s) often remarked on the imagistic, playfully experimental quality of his work.

“The Enchanted,” which opened Wednesday at Chapman College’s Waltmar Theatre, where it continues through Sunday, is a fey example of his style. This thoughtful comedy of a girl, a ghost and a bunch of worried villagers is given a frisky treatment by director Ron Thronson and his student cast.

Giraudoux’s seldom-produced 1933 play, an adult’s fable with a veneer of the child’s fairy tale, has much going on under its fantastic, ephemeral surface. The author pricks at all sorts of social conventions, from conformity to pedantry to cliched romanticism to conservatism. All done with Giraudoux’s bright wit, the satirical asides are always palatable.

For sure, the story does get a little precious. At the center of the fabulist plot are Isabel (played by the wide-eyed Windy Bunts) and the ghost (given appropriate reserve by Jeffrey Shaw), a strange couple who meet in the woods for love and banter.

Isabel is a curious girl with many questions about death and the afterlife. When they meet, she wonders if the dead, like the living, are clumsy, if they can slip on celestial banana peels, or the memory of them. The ghost replies that the dead are very agile. Isabel is immediately attracted; that’s where the danger lies.

While she anguishes over the real and the spiritual, Isabel is wooed by the noble Supervisor (played with easy humor by Ben Nichols), who struggles to keep her among the living. The Supervisor’s a sensible fellow; when he talks about death, it’s described as “retirement without pay.”

Like the Supervisor, the townsfolk are disturbed by the ghost and the odd things that happen in his wake--everyone has weird, prophetic dreams, among other things--and bring in the strait-laced Inspector (given the necessary bombast by J. David Dahl) to clear things up.

There are more than a few times when Thronson’s production is clumsy and clearly an amateur offering--Ron Coffman’s cutout sets, for example, are supposed to appear dreamy but have a cost-cutting look instead--but the cast’s pertness and Giraudoux’s writing allow for some pardons.

‘THE ENCHANTED’

A Chapman College production of Jean Giraudoux’s play. Directed by Ron Thronson. With Roger Mathey, Kirk Scott, J. David Dahl, Ben Nichols, Windy Bunts, Faith Jackson, Anastasia Coon, Rachelle Edwards, Giovanna Brokaw, Megan Lowe, Angelique Adams, Jennifer Faux, Jeffrey Shaw, Jolin Harrison, Rochelle Lane, Pete Sepenuk, Michael Baker, David Teller and Michael Rovno. Sets and lighting by Ron Coffman. Sound by Craig Brown. Costumes by Dawn Martinez. Plays today and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Waltmar Theatre, 333 N. Glassell Ave., Orange. Tickets: $5 and $3. (714) 997-6812.