‘Ardele’ Fails to Maintain Necessary Subtlety

Playwrights and their sensibilities go in and out of vogue, and Jean Anouilh’s crisp romantic cynicism has been experiencing something of a resurgence, starting last year when New York’s Roundabout Theatre staged “The Rehearsal.” Now, the Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice has picked up the baton with a lovely production of “Ardele,” a rarely seen gem in the Anouilh canon.

An upper-class household is thrown into a tizzy when Ardele, an unseen middle-aged woman with a hunchback, falls in love with another hunchback and wants to marry him. Her brother, the general (Richard Fancy, also played by William Dennis Hunt), is appalled. He locks Ardele in her room, threatening to keep her there unless she recants her love. He summons his other sister, the age-conscious countess (Kathleen Garrett, also Betsy Zang), who arrives with her patient husband (Michael Rothhaar) and her lover (Robert Lee Jacobs), to help.

In this household, virtually every grown person is carrying some kind of adulterous torch. This is a comic morality tale in which the “normal” people are, in fact, the grotesques, and the hunchback Ardele, of whom they are all deeply ashamed, is living life straight.

The ensemble is a finely balanced unit, and the set (Kurt Wahlner) and costumes (Audrey Eisner), which charter an upper-class 1912 milieu, are all equally impressive and intelligent.

Things fall apart in the end, and it is difficult to tell whether it is the fault of the play or Sharron Shayne, who plays the general’s bedridden wife, Emily. When Emily breaks lose from her bedroom, shrieking hell-fire for all of the lusting souls in the house, the play’s subtle comic tones disappear and “Ardele” becomes harsh and heavy-handed and not funny.

Ardele, Pacific Resident Theatre, 705 1/2 Venice Blvd., Venice, Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Ends Oct. 26. $18. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.