THEATER : Convoluted : ‘Relatively Speaking,’ Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘60s farce at the Richard Basehart Playhouse, offers a plot with comic twists and turns.

Meet Philip & Sheila and Greg & Ginny.

Young Londoners Greg and Ginny are engaged, and she’s supposedly off to visit her folks in the country. But Ginny is really heading for a tryst with her older lover, Philip. Meanwhile, Philip’s wife, Sheila, has been sending herself love notes to make her husband jealous. But when Greg shows up to check on Ginny--and ask the parents for permission to marry their daughter--Philip assumes that the young man is his wife’s (make-believe) lover.

Got it?

Convoluted though it sounds, “Relatively Speaking” director John Carter promises that theater audiences will have no problem following the play’s comic twists and turns. “The only one who never figures out what’s going on is the young man, Greg,” said the actor-director, who’s staging Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘60s farce at the Richard Basehart Playhouse in Woodland Hills, where it opened last weekend.

And, Carter says, it’s all done strictly for laughs.

“It’s not really a social comedy,” he stressed, “not like Ayckbourn’s later plays. Pure and simple, it’s a play about mistaken identity, like a Feydeau farce.” He thought for a moment, then called out to the show’s producer, Cynthia Baer. “Cynthia, I wouldn’t say there’s any deep message to this play, would you?” With the consensus that there is not, Carter chuckled and added: “If there is a message, it’s that lying gets you further than the truth.”

Carter, a native of Arkansas--”way back in the hills; the nearest village was three miles away”--moved to Missouri at age 14 and later attended the University of Missouri. Intent on becoming “a rich and famous actor,” he headed to New York and, after 14 years there, resettled in Los Angeles, where he’s lived since 1969. His directing credits include CBS-TV’s “Barnaby Jones” (in which he co-starred as Lt. Biddle) and “Betty Garrett and Other Songs” at Theatre West in Studio City.

Theatre West was also the starting point for this production, which grew out of a scene that Carter and actors Margaret Muse and Marc Grady Adams were developing in a workshop.

“I thought it was one of the funniest plays I’d ever read,” the director said, “and I told them I wanted to continue with it.”

Theatre West company members Andrew Parks and Sara Ballantine were promptly brought on board as the younger couple, and the piece was subsequently performed last summer as a work-in-progress.

Basehart artistic director Baer--an old friend of Carter’s from their New York days--saw the staging at Theatre West and offered the company a spot at her theater.

The production marks a return visit to the Basehart for actress Muse, who played the sinister lead in Ira Levin’s thriller “Veronica’s Room” at the theater in 1990.

“Sheila is a very sweet woman, but a little ditzy,” Muse said of her character. “Ultimately, she figures out what’s going on and handles it much more adroitly than I ever could. The wonderful thing abut Ayckbourn is that he’s not dependent on jokes and gags. The humor comes out of character and situation, mistaken identity and mistaken ideas. And the audience always knows what’s going on. That’s where the fun is.”

Where and When What: “Relatively Speaking.” Location: Richard Basehart Playhouse, 21028-B Victory Blvd., Woodland Hills. Hours: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Indefinitely. Price: $12 to $15. Call: (818) 704-1845.