THEATER REVIEWS : In ‘Hay Fever,’ the Frill Is Gone

Nothing really can be made of nothing, and the proof is at Stanton Cultural Arts Center, where Noel Coward’s frill of a comedy, “Hay Fever,” is being indifferently revived.

A kind of British companion play to Kaufman and Hart’s “You Can’t Take It With You,” “Hay Fever” displays an eccentric artistic family that simply can’t connect with boring, normal outsiders. In both, a grown-up daughter tries to be a go-between with the normal world, but to no avail. Nutty families, like playwrights’ imaginations, shouldn’t be reined in.

Being a leading British stage actress in the late 1930s, Judith Bliss (Bettie Muellenberg) has influenced her entire family in how to play out a part in order to get one’s way. Both her daughter, Sorel (Monica Suter), and son, Simon (Tony Fahl), have learned well, and husband and best-selling writer David (Richard June) loves playing the cheated spouse while cheating himself.

Actors in the Bliss family roles must be aware of the double levels of performance and reality. Director John Craig’s Stanton Community Theatre actors can’t remotely execute this trick, so the comedy is virtually laughless and parched.

The problems extend to the actors playing the weekend guests at the Bliss estate, who should be funny, too, for different reasons. Once again, they’re not.

The two female guests, Myra (Beth Titus) and Jackie (Lissa Mirand), as well as the two men, Sandy (Jeffrey June) and Richard (Tony Grande), are as different from the other as they all are from the Blisses.

Myra is all poise; Jackie is shy to the point of tears; Sandy is a dumb jock, and Richard is a gentle, professional diplomat. Titus musters a few charming moments when her Myra is caught in flagrante delicto , and Mirand’s timing is the best of the ensemble, but Grande and Jeffrey June draw blanks.

In the nutty-family circle, Suter’s Sorel is alternately sober and scattered, and Fahl’s Simon isn’t the wit he should be. Muellenberg presents the biggest problem, because she appears clueless about how to suggest a great actress in domestic hell. Richard June, alas, resembles a Vegas sharpie more than a British novelist.

Craig’s mechanical sense of movement and pacing are so far from the traditionally effervescent Coward style--this is the playwright’s quintessential weekend play--that it sometimes doesn’t feel like Coward at all.

It doesn’t sound much like Coward, either, because almost no one shows any interest in keeping up an appropriate British accent. The aural details are virtually lost in the cultural center’s auditorium, which is an acoustic nightmare no actor should have to put up with.

No audience, either.

* “Hay Fever,” Stanton Cultural Arts Center, 7800 Katella Ave., Stanton. Tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m. Ends Saturday. $6-$8. (714) 758-8292. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.