In ‘Way of the World,’ Nothing Is as It Seems : Theater review: The Old Globe Theatre’s timeless staging of the William Congreve 1700 Restoration comedy of manners is handsome with lots of plot and just as much humor.

When a gentleman employs the phrase “the way of the world” in the William Congreve play of that title, he refers to all the machinations of the material world--greed, duplicity and lechery--that despicable people always use to explain why their way of operating is necessary. The Old Globe Theatre’s new production of the 1700 play, the last of the Restoration comedies, underlines the similarities between Congreve’s material world and our own.

But, if you’re not in a mood to be lectured to, director Jack O’Brien provides a show handsome and jolly enough just to entertain, until of course Congreve gets off one of his exceptional zingers.

There is so much plot in “The Way of the World” that my best advice is to ignore it. Just who is betraying whom will be abundantly clear. Money is almost always the reason, except in the case of Mirabell (Byron Jennings) and Millamant (Carolyn McCormick) who machinate because they are in love. At least they’re more in love than anyone else, which means they speak frankly to each other of their base motivations.

Love is extremely relative here.

In the wit department, these lovers are descendants of Shakespeare’s comedic heroes, but in fact they are closer to their own descendants, the overly bred, overly cultured vultures of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” adapted into a popular play and movie of the 1980s as well as the San Francisco Opera production opening next week. Tossing off bon mots while making dangerous liaisons is everything; real feeling is entirely beside the point.

O’Brien sets the play vaguely in this century, but provides a handsome couple in 17th-Century dress to watch the proceedings as if to make sure the characters are getting it right. They sometimes call our attention to a mirror atop the set (oh, there we are!). A bust of Shakespeare also looks down at the stage, with a bored Will leaning casually on one arm, showing a kind of mild tolerance for the work of a minor rival. He may also be impatient with these characters.

Mirabell and Fainall (Mark Harelik) are ostensibly friends, sharing a hand of cards, gossip and cold philosophy on seducing women for practical purposes. That they will battle each other ruthlessly and secretly for the control of Millamant’s fortune has no bearing on their friendship--betrayal is simply the way of the world.

The women are no better. Millamant readily confesses that the chief pleasure of her beauty is its power to inflict pain, which she and everyone else do with the hearty faith that no other logic could possibly prevail.

In a world devoid of spirituality, looks are everything, and this play looks pretty terrific. Sets (Ralph Funicello), lights (Kent Dorsey) and particularly costumes (Lewis Brown) are striking. The palette is set by the stage floor, a green pseudo-marble streaked with blues and purples.

Brown dresses the women in fashions that borrow (much like designer Vivienne Westwood) from both relevant centuries--the fine ladies wear the huge petticoats of Congreve’s time but in contemporary colors, black-and-white check, shades of brown with pink bows, magenta. Their maids dress as the assistants to Lady Di would, in expensive but dowdy off-the-rack dresses and sensible shoes. This keen and witty attention to dress keeps the play spinning in just the right fashion. How things and people look is of utmost importance to the success of the play.

Brown has dressed Millamant as the most vulgar of the fine ladies, and McCormick plays her as such, so insistent about her charms that it’s surprising anyone finds her charming at all. (This is a bit of a problem, as we would like someone to root for, however halfheartedly.) As her lover, Jennings is much drier and more likable, using a debonair appeal to the audience to join with him in suffering the other fools on the stage with droll humor.

As Fainall, the villain only slightly more villainous than the hero, Mark Harelik is that dangerous blend--a confident nervous wreck. He also looks fabulous, smoking a cigarette like the most dashingly cold cad, with black hair as oily as his philosophy.

As his mistress Marwood, Lillian Garrett-Groag will be a revelation to anyone who saw her battered Native American squaw in “The Kentucky Cycle”; here she is as hard and glamorous as a diamond. Also terrific as Mrs. Fainall is Jennifer Schelter, who is so quietly confident of her Catherine Deneuve-like beauty that she can actually wear a hat on top of Amazonian height.

Of the purely comic roles, Mary Louise Wilson as Lady Wishfort alone makes her character something more than silly. She has a hilarious bit ordering about her maid (Anna Cody), whose useless hands dangle from her wrists like a woman with a fresh manicure. Two other maids, Foible (Monique Fowler) and Mincing (Eve Holbrook), are both very funny. Henry J. Jordan as Mirabell’s man is also excellent.

Adapter Dakin Matthews supplies a nifty prologue and epilogue that, in true Restoration form, refers in a fun, insidery-way to the world of the theatergoers.

Congreve’s final message to us--”Marriage frauds too oft are repaid in kind”--is an apt warning, always relevant. But if you hope to be faithful for some less pragmatic reason, there is none even hinted at in “The Way of the World.” With any luck, you’ll find that reason in your own world.

* “The Way of the World,” the Old Globe Theatre at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts, San Diego, Tuesday-Sunday, 8 p.m., Ends Oct . 2. $22-$34. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.

Fainall: Mark Harelik Mirabell: Bryon Jennings Lady Wishfort: Mary Louise Wilson Mrs. Millamant: Carolyn McCormick Mrs. Marwood: Lillian Garrett-Groag Mrs. Fainall: Jennifer Schelter Foible: Monique Fowler Mincing: Eve Holbrook Witwoud: James R. Winker Petulant: Charley Lang Wilfull Witwoud: Tom Ramirez Waitwell: Henry J. Jordan Betty, Peg: Anna Cody Household Servants: Michael Brandt, David Natale, Patrick Munoz

An Old Globe Theatre production. By William Congreve. Adapted by Dakin Matthews. Directed by Jack O’Brien. Sets by Ralph Funicello. Costumes by Lewis Brown. Lights by Kent Dorsey. Composer Larry Delinger. Sound Jeff Ladman. Voice/dialect coach Claudia Hill. Stage manager Peter Van Dyke.