STAGE REVIEW : A Moving Show Within a Show : Theater: West Coast premiere of adaptation of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ finds strength in its simplicity.

Great art, like true love, can gain poignancy from difficult circumstances.

That aphorism makes Everett Quinton’s adaptation of “A Tale of Two Cities” so heartbreakingly charming. When you’re broke--as Quinton was when he penned the piece for his Ridiculous Theatrical Company in New York--conceiving an economical one-man, multicharacter piece that spurs a contrast between the riches of the imagination and the poverty of the narrator’s surroundings, becomes at once a necessity and an artistic statement.

It is ironic that to see exquisite portrayals of poverty, one must spend $35-plus for a ticket for a multimillion-dollar spectacle like “Les Miserables.”

But the simplicity of “A Tale of Two Cities,” in which a poor transvestite acts out 22 characters from the Charles Dickens novel, all to quiet a crying baby left on his doorstep, makes the story accessible for everybody--an idea that Dickens, that great populist of the 19th Century, would have doubtless appreciated.

It’s also a fitting choice for the San Diego Repertory Theatre, which is producing the West Coast premiere of the show at the Lyceum Space, starring the talented Ron Campbell, through Dec. 7. The Rep, like the character acting out the story, is struggling at the edge of the financial abyss; as it reminds patrons in the program, it needs $350,000 by the end of the year if it isn’t to go the way of the now-defunct Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Poor or not, the Rep has put on a handsome production--even if it has padded what should be a 90-minute show with shtick that extends it to two hours.

And it has provided an auspicious San Diego debut for Campbell, well known in Los Angeles for his work at the late LATC as well as the Mark Taper Forum and the Grove Shakespeare Festival.

The piece requires an actor capable of portraying an inherent vulnerability and tenderness in the person of Jerry, who is anxiously getting ready to make his performing debut as a drag queen that evening. At the same time he must possess brash confidence to carry off tour-de-force entertainment, instantaneously switching accents, postures and sensibilities.

Campbell delivers it all.

While Jerry bathes, shaves, puts on makeup and dresses for his big night, Campbell pulls out handy household props (provided in Jack Taggart’s handsome set and costume design) to act out for the baby Dickens’ sweeping tale of the lives of those caught up in the French Revolution.

With a nasty smirk and a Honey-Nut Cheerios box on his head for a hat, he becomes the evil aristocrat, St. Evremonde, who kills and rapes peasants as he pleases; his stance straightens and his voice deepens as the marquis’ decent nephew, Charles Darnay, who repudiates him and marries Lucie Manette, the English-bred daughter of a man his uncle cruelly imprisoned in the Bastille on false charges; he raises a shaving cream can--mid-shave--to his lips to portray the hard-drinking Sydney Carton, who dreams of one day making the ultimate sacrifice for Lucie, the woman he loves but can never have; and armed only with two turkey basters and an afghan, he “knits” shrouds as the bitter, squinting Mme. Defarge, the French revolutionary whose entire family was wiped out by St. Evremonde and subsequently plots revenge on all of his blood relations, including the innocent Darnay, his wife and his child.

In two of the show’s most electrifying moments, he lifts up the metal bed frame of his sleeper sofa to storm the Bastille (with the help of Diane Boomer’s evocative lighting) and, using a hair dryer as a pistol, he battles himself to the death, enacting the scene in which the very English Miss Pross, who has spent her life taking care of Lucie, fights Mme. Defarge to ensure Lucie’s escape from the guillotine.

Under the sensitive direction of Sam Woodhouse, producing director of the Rep, Campbell also develops a tender, if grudging relationship with the baby. One gets the sense that, by the end of the piece, as he is transformed into a glamorous singer, he has also been transformed personally by the strength of Dickens’ tale of romantic self-sacrifice into a man capable of making romantic self-sacrifices for the baby.

The production has its flaws. Trims are called for and some of the gags--at the baby’s expense--walk an uneasy line between the outrageous and the offensive.

But this is, overwhelmingly, a deeply moving show within a show within a show. The high drama of Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” reverberates in the tale of Jerry telling his version of it with his limited means. And Jerry’s tale in turn amplifies the real-life drama of the San Diego Rep, telling this story with its own limited means.

“A TALE OF TWO CITIES”

Adapted from the Charles Dickens novel by Everett Quinton. Director is Sam Woodhouse. Sets and costumes by Jack Taggart. Music composition and sound design by Lawrence Czoka. Choreography by Javier Velasco. Combat direction by Martin Katz. Stage manager is Susan A. Virgilio. With Ron Campbell. At 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through Dec. 7. Tickets are $19-22. At the Lyceum Space, 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego, 235-8025.