STAGE REVIEWS : Troupe’s Not Up to Fighting Trojan War : Rancho Santiago College’s Professional Actors Conservatory Theatre does little more than pose in ‘Troilus and Cressida.’

“Troilus and Cressida” is an ambitious undertaking for any theater company. Although Shakespeare’s rendering of the Trojan War culminates in a lengthy and populous battle scene, ultimately it is a talky play in which wooing and winning, in war and love, are games of wit rather than of action.

Between the sword and the tongue, the production of Rancho Santiago College’s Professional Actors Conservatory Theatre Company is defeated.

The company, which draws most of its performers from its own 40-hour-a-week, two-year training program, has put its efforts into the spoken word, but the results are neither musical nor dramatic.

The affected English accents do nothing to dignify the proceedings, sounding at best unnaturally mid-Atlantic and at worst, distractingly phony. The quality of most of the voices is shockingly poor, given the purported hours spent in exercises. Even when a player demonstrates a gift for cadence, as does Phillip W. Beck as Ulysses, the meaning of the words is lost in the melodious flourishes.

The emotional content of the story is almost completely neglected. Instead of expressing feeling, the actors pose and illustrate, with the exception of Joel Stoffer as Achilles. Stoffer has a liquid evil in his eye, and his body fairly pulsates with vanity and scorn. Except for his performance--the only one that communicates any sense of danger--one would never know that the play takes place in the heat of war.

Director Endre Hules has not created a world for the play’s action. The Greeks and Trojans are practically indistinguishable from one another, even though one army is living at home and the other has spent many years in the tents of siege.

When we discover the infamously seductive Helen of Troy in the arms of her ravishing prince, Paris, the only steam in the scene is the dry ice that wafts from the jokey spa setting. There’s no evidence of anything that might have launched a thousand ships.

The heart of E. Scott Shaffer’s set design is a nicely gritty, but under-used, dirt arena. The rest of the set wants to be a grand cascade of stairways in and outside the walled city of Troy, but it feels squashed and characterless under Gary Christensen’s lighting. Hules’ blocking is desperately pragmatic; every scene ends with the final lines being swallowed by an awkward exit. The rush of soldiers across the stage, meant to simulate the terrors of battle, evokes laughs. The balletic, strobe-like imagery of the play’s final carnage is effective, but that arrives almost three hours into the performance.

‘TROILUS AND CRESSIDA’

A Rancho Santiago College Professional Actors Conservatory Theatre Company production of Shakespeare’s historical drama. Directed by Endre Hules. With Chris Williams, Christopher Arnold, Mark Eli Talley, Jim Linde, James Shearhart, Steve Grodt, Jeff Hutcherson, Dan Cole, Victor Pappas, James Rice, Phillip W. Beck, Cole Andersen, Joel Stoffer, Todd Terry, Darin Heames, Terrance Elton, Mark Allen Bollinger, Jeff King, Mark Moyer, Steve Ramirez, Rachel Malkenhorst, Kimberley J. Shivers, Michelle Archer, Karen Razler and Kristin Schnee.

Scenic Design by E. Scott Shaffer. Lighting and sound by Gary Christensen. Costumes by Maria Wortham. Performances Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m. through May 19. At the P.A.C. Theatre, 333 South Prospect Ave., Orange. Tickets: $10, general; $6, students and senior citizens. (714) 564-5661.