THEATER REVIEW : Chappell Puts Life Into South Coast’s ‘Lettice’

“Lettice & Lovage,” Peter Shaffer’s burlesque complaint about the decline of England, plays like a farce without doors. It seems a paradoxical contraption, funny but serious. Built for amusement, it works like a witty mechanical toy yet insists on shifting gears for a glimpse of human wreckage.

South Coast Repertory’s production negotiates these contradictory impulses largely on the strength of a grandiose performance by Kandis Chappell in the histrionic title role. She takes command of Lettice, an oddball fabulist, with more than enough panache to make you forget that Shaffer wrote the role for the mannered talents of Maggie Smith.

Chappell delivers a larger-than-life portrait of a middle-aged tour guide who works at a gloomy Tudor mansion called Fustian House. Its history is so dull that Lettice’s dreary lectures are turning her listeners gray with boredom. Unwilling to be defeated by mere facts, she soon is embellishing the lackluster truth with ancestral tales that amaze and gratify.

The production, which continues through May 15 on the SCR Mainstage, luxuriates in Chappell’s comic flamboyance. Everything about Lettice is heightened for effect, from her bursts of fantasy to her stylish bohemian wardrobe. Her very existence seems a theatrical invention, like the Shakespearean props that furnish her basement flat, or the potent Elizabethan home-brew she makes from mead, vodka, sugar and lovage.

Left to herself, Lettice might be just another harmless eccentric. But her tales of Fustian heroics have not escaped notice. There are complaints. And they have come to the attention of Lotte Shoen, the head of personnel at the Preservation Trust, which oversees the historic mansion. Lotte, a grim bureaucrat played with mannish severity by Megan Cole, confronts Lettice about her outrageous fabrications and fires her.

The clash between these two diametrical opposites--showy, instinctive fantasist against prosaic, intellectual factualist--eventually becomes a bonding ritual of two lonely spinsters who discover they really are kindred spirits. Both feel alienated by contemporary life. Lettice hates technology; Lotte despises ugly modern architecture. Both have a love of beauty and culture and, it turns out, share an enthusiasm for bold figures in English history.

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Directing the show with a steady hand, David Emmes keeps the laughs coming. But as entertaining as the production strives to be, it doesn’t feel inspired or especially British. Emmes seems willing to settle for well-spoken dialogue with wandering accents. He also seems to favor relentlessly loud line readings.

Meanwhile, a ton of exposition late in the second act suddenly threatens to capsize the play. It is here that Lotte unburdens herself of her disastrous personal history, temporarily submerging the farce in bathos. Cole picks her way through the scene as carefully as possible.

The play regains its comic buoyancy in the third act, thanks to a stepped-up pace and a far-fetched conclusion. Shaffer introduces a stuffy, bewildered lawyer desperately trying to make sense of a charge of attempted murder brought against Lettice by the police. Don Took, who plays the lawyer, hits some brittle, crowd-pleasing notes.

Meanwhile, costume designer Shigeru Yaji again shows his stunning flair. He drapes Chappell in a layered look that makes just the right statement about Lettice. Each of her outfits projects imagination, elegance and warmth.

* “Lettice & Lovage,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Ends May 15. $25-$35. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

Kandis Chappell: Lettice Douffet

Art Koustik: Surly Man

Megan Cole: Lotte Shoen

Mimi Savage: Miss Framer

Don Took: Mr. Bardolph

A South Coast Repertory production of a play by Peter Shaffer, directed by David Emmes. Scenic designer: Michael Levine. Costume designer: Shigeru Yaji. Lighting designer: Peter Maradudin. Sound designer: Garth Hemphill. Production manager: Michael Mora. Stage manager: Julie Haber.