VALLEY WEEKEND : REVIEW : Adaptation of ‘The Mandrake’ Takes Radical Leap Into Farce : The play lacks power, though its creator has found the comic pulse of each character and the director keeps the production running smoothly.

If the ghosts of Niccolo Machiavelli and Georges Feydeau met, would they shake hands? Or would they slap each other in the face?

That’s one thought that crosses the mind as one watches “The Art of Seduction,” Craig Alpaugh’s very, very free adaptation of Machiavelli’s 16th century “Mandragola” (better known as “The Mandrake”) at Group Repertory Theatre.

Another thought is a little less mystical: Since Alpaugh, in collaboration with director Malcolm Atterbury Jr., decided to turn “The Mandrake” into a farce precisely in the style of Feydeau, why didn’t he just do Feydeau instead?

Yet another thought pops up, but it would mean putting Alpaugh out of work: If you’re going to do “The Mandrake,” why not do Wallace Shawn’s brilliant version, which, as far as we can figure, has never been staged in Los Angeles?

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But, idle thoughts come and go, and what we have is a Machiavelli-goes-to-Paris-and-gets-frisky version. The less you know about “The Mandrake,” the more you’re likely to enjoy Alpaugh’s fairly buoyant farce. But for “Mandrake” fans, it’s caveat emptor.

Let’s not go through the long and boring list of differences between “Mandrake” and “Seduction,” but let’s be sure of one thing: Alpaugh has made a radical leap from the textured, nuanced, dark-but-light original.

Each tells how a young man (Daniel Trippett’s Pierre) manages, through a baroque set of ruses designed by a deal maker (Robert Axelrod’s Maurice), to bed down with a married woman (Rachelle Carmony’s Angelique) he yearns for--and does it with the help of her impotent husband (Richard Tirrell’s Copain).

Shawn’s notes stress that “The Mandrake” can be played in any number of styles and shades, that it can be darkly cynical or energetically life-affirming. But while Machiavelli’s central plot point is for the young bride to drink mandrake root to make her fertile, and to kill her randy lover while giving her husband an heir, Alpaugh dispenses with this completely. Here, we get a nicely funny and ironic, but much less dramatic and complex, situation. Moving the action from Florence to Paris is one thing; depleting the original of much of its power is another.

At the same time, this is a huge improvement from Alpaugh’s previous farce for Group Rep, the numb-skullish “Neighborhood Crime Watch.” Now he’s found the comic pulse of every character and taken them to their logical, funny ends; director Atterbury keeps it all running smoothly. Trippett plays Pierre a tad over the top, but he’s never too out of step with his fellow farceurs, led by Axelrod, who’s strong on razor-sharp timing and acerbic double-takes.

Carmony is all sweetness, which in this gaggle of comics means she’s overshadowed by the likes of Randy Polk as Pierre’s witless valet, Gerald Brodin (replacing William Arrigon ) as an over-keen gendarme, Lori Street-Tubert as a man-hungry widow and Philip McKeown as a friar who can’t help doing the wrong thing. As Angelique’s mother and husband, respectively, Pat Sturges and Tirrell are prim, proper Parisians, until they get alone on a love seat.

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DETAILS

* WHAT: “The Art of Seduction”

* WHERE: Group Repertory Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Runs indefinitely.

* HOW MUCH: $15.

* CALL: (818) 769-7529.