STAGE REVIEW : Marriage and Malice Coexist in Stylish ‘School for Scandal’

Richard Sheridan’s “The School for Scandal,” whose wit and felicity of style have been drawing laughs for more than 200 years, is enjoying a bountiful staging at the Long Beach Playhouse’s Studio Theatre.

Sheridan, who moved in London’s highest social circles, captured the malice, gossip and scandalmongers of his time with delicious invention. Even as museum-theater, with all the buckles and wigs in place, the play constantly flows from one comical crisis to another.

In Long Beach, director Darlene Hunter-Chaffee crisply negotiates the interweaving strands of the two major plots--the parlor gossips typified by Lady Sneerwell and her crowd and, in another salon, the embattled marriage of young Lady Teazle and a husband old enough to be her father, the exasperated Sir Peter Teazle.

With few exceptions, the 17-member cast is highly polished. The actors are well-spoken, sumptuously costumed and very 18th Century in their aristocratic foppery and style.

Spirited Robin McKee and the harrumphing Robert Kokol play the mismatched Teazles, who finally learn to accept one another and their simpering friends. Sheridan’s legendary scene with the screens is richly managed, with the unctuous libertine Joseph Surface (the smooth Brenan T. Baird) squirreling Lady Teazle behind a panel of boudoir screens while he hides Sir Peter in a closet.

Especially strong among the gossips are the delightful Kathy Davis as the imperious Mrs. Candour and Clive Rees as the perfumed Sir Benjamin Backbite (Sheridan’s touch for names is hard to resist). Scenic and lighting designer Robert C. Mumm contributed the requisite decor with spare props set against a blue and white color scheme.

Sir Peter Teazle, much like Moliere’s Misanthrope, is bound to a young wife he can’t control. But, unlike Moliere, Sheridan’s warmth of spirit is generous, ultimately dramatizing Teazle as a character who learns to laugh at himself and to embrace the nature, rather than the image, of marriage.

“The School for Scandal,” Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach, Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., with a matinee Jan. 17, 2 p.m. Ends Jan. 30. $10. (310) 494-1616. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.