Theater Review : ‘No Sex’ Has Some Appeal : Fullerton Civic Light Opera does the best it can with Anthony Marriott’s and Alistair Foot’s outdated comedy.

If flower-power decals and Keds shoes can make a comeback, then maybe so can another relic of the ‘60s: Anthony Marriott’s and Alistair Foot’s farce “No Sex Please, We’re British.” The revival attempt at Muckenthaler Cultural Center amphitheater, care of Fullerton Civic Light Opera’s Theatre on the Green series, is as sincere a servicing of a worn-out comedy as you’re likely to see anywhere.

Director Jim Whitson’s smooth, well-paced staging does all it can do, and so do the actors, but nobody, nowhere, nohow is going to erase the expiration date of this piece of boulevard-theater fluff. It’s still running on London’s West End, not because of its timelessness, but just the opposite: It plays for foreign tourists who want to see how ridiculous the Brits are about sex.

It’s really a “Carry On” comedy in one room--with a lot of swinging doors leading to others. The prototypical character is an uptight bank inspector, Mr. Needham, who gets worked into a libidinous lather by a couple of sex kittens who mistake him for a customer. The American version of a Needham would probably turn into a libertine for life, or maybe a serial killer. This Needham will get himself together, though, and get back to work the next day.

“No Sex Please” was written at the time of “the permissive society” (a phrase that’s actually discussed seriously in the play), and the joke is since permission has been granted, it’s making hell of people’s lives--especially people who do it but never talk about it.

Newlyweds Peter (Phil Oakley), a bank manager, and Frances (Debbie Grattan) obviously do it and are liking it so much that they’re very unhappy when Peter’s nosy mother, Eleanor (Kathy Davis) starts her stay-over visit much earlier than planned.

Of course, nothing goes as planned, especially where the bank’s nervous-Nellie cashier, Brian (Matt Miller), is concerned. Marriott’s and Foot’s plot complications begin so early and become so complicated and so far-fetched that nothing after awhile--not shipments of Scandinavian-porn postcards, not the snooping police superintendent (Dana Craig), not the sense that the whole town seems to live in Peter’s and Frances’ living room--is too much to fit into this farce.

Peter and Frances, despite her teasing lingerie sashaying, are a bit bland to give this madness a human face. Instead, it has a frantic face in Brian, and Miller drives this production like a jittery conductor with way too much coffee in his veins.

His stark shock at seeing Craig’s cop reading the evening paper announcing him as “The Phantom Pornographer” is a small classic of slow-speed lunacy. Time and time again, though he can be speedy and jumpy, Miller reminds that farce can be even funnier when it crawls along.

Oakley and Grattan do the less-showy stuff of rolling eyes and putting on a calm facade when all hell has broken loose, and it rarely comes off as mechanical. Eleanor’s chatterbox mother is such a perfect realization of the clueless bourgeois matron that even her bad innuendo-filled lines are kind of charming. Craig is a little too close to the cliche of the New York Irish copper, but Wesley Mask’s Mr. Bromhead and Brian Mulligan’s much-abused Needham are just the thing as proper banking men, and as such, they are prime targets for rude undressing.

Whitson fills his staging with some cute little tricks, like a nutty kitchen disposal and a truly 3-D costume worn by the naughty Sonia Garrett. Doors shut solidly on cue on Stephen Craig’s set, designed in bank manager browns, and things are frantic enough that the occasional stray plane from nearby Fullerton airport is hardly noticed.

That’s not because this farce pulls us in; it’s because Whitson and company do their job very well, despite a creaking comedy that lurches toward its long-overdue ending.

* “No Sex Please, We’re British,” Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton. Tuesdays-Sundays, 8:15 p.m. (dinner at 7 p.m.). $22-$33. (714) 526-3832. Ends July 29. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes. Phil Oakley: Peter

Debbie Grattan: Frances

Matt Miller: Brian

Kathy Davis: Eleanor

Wesley Mask: Mr. Bromhead

Dana Craig: Superintendent Paul

Brian Mulligan: Mr. Needham

Sonia Garbett: Susan

Stephanie Orff: Barbara

A Fullerton Civic Light Opera production of Anthony Marriott and Alistair Foot’s farce. Directed by Jim Whitson. Set: Stephen Craig. Lights: Jene Roach.