For the love of the Irish

For the second year in a row, Laguna Playhouse will have an Irish comedy up on St. Patrick’s Day. Once again, it’s the U.S. premiere of a Bernard Farrell comedy, directed by Andrew Barnicle.

This year’s “Lovers at Versailles,” which opened Saturday, is ambitiously structured and amiably entertaining, but it isn’t up to the standard of last year’s “Stella by Starlight.”

The title is ironic -- the middle-class lovers in the play are a long way from Versailles. Anna (Kelley Hazen) and David (Kevin Black) meet in a Dublin club, but most of the play is set a decade later, in the aftermath of the death of Anna’s beloved father, Stephen (Joe Medalis), and in Anna’s memories of what went on during those 10 years.

It quickly becomes clear that Anna and David’s promising flirtation in the club is, by now, kaput. They’ve long since split up.

What happened?

The back-and-forth chronology is complicated on paper, but it’s clear in the theater, thanks to adept shifts in Paulie Jenkins’ lighting. What isn’t so clear is why certain things happened.

The characters feel underwritten, despite the play’s length of nearly three hours.

Stephen and his wife, Clara (Marcia Rodd), live in a suburban house adjacent to the little grocery store that Stephen runs. As the play begins, their adult daughters, Anna and Isobel (Rebecca Dines), still live at home.

Anna works in the store with her father, while Isobel works in a dentist’s office.

Stephen, in the script and in Medalis’ performance, is a charming man in his 60s with a spry sense of humor and a declining memory for details.

Clara, also in her 60s, is cold, controlling and paranoid. Why these two got married is never explained. Their personalities are too simplistically lopsided. Not surprisingly, Anna adores her father but has a rancorous relationship with her mother.

When she and David make plans to marry and move to Finland (David’s a carpenter, and he prefers Scandinavian timber), Stephen gives his blessing, but Clara objects.

If Anna leaves, Clara will have to take over the task of assisting forgetful Stephen in the store.

As the wedding draws closer, Clara concocts “dizzy spells” as part of her obstructionist campaign.

But they take place offstage -- and they’re simply not credible. Rodd’s Clara is a virtual battle-ax, not a wilting lily.

And it doesn’t ring true that Anna would be stuck at home on her wedding day, taking care of the “dizzy” offstage mother she doesn’t like.

Logically, her sister would have stayed home, but no, her sister is the one who’s at the church.

That sister and her eventual husband (Richard Ashton) are the play’s primary source of comic relief.

They’re shallow and tactless and give marriage a bad name.

The counterpoint between them and the sympathetic Anna and David is indeed funny, especially in the second act, but again the lines are too starkly drawn between the “good” and the “bad” characters.

A second opportunity arises for Anna and David, and this time the fervid opposition by Clara and other family members seems even more of a playwright’s conflict-building device than something that would actually happen.

Whenever Clara is with David, she is unfailingly polite -- so why does she bear such animus toward him?

Hazen makes visible Anna’s hidden strength, as well as her indecision.

But the stronger Anna seems, the less sense the play makes, so it’s ultimately a self-defeating role.

Set designer Dwight Richard Odle’s drab living room opens up to reveal a small grocery store in lavish detail and later a health club that serves as Farrell’s comment on a changing Ireland.

It’s easy to enjoy “Lovers at Versailles” on a superficial level.

But on further reflection, Farrell’s own carpentry is hardly seamless.

*

‘Lovers at Versailles’

Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach

When: Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m.

Ends: March 23

Price: $42-$49

Contact: (949) 497-2787

Running Time: 2 hours, 50 minutes

Kelley Hazen...Anna

Joe Medalis...Stephen

Marcia Rodd...Clara

Rebecca Dines...Isobel

Richard Ashton...Tony

Kevin Black...David

Rende Rae Norman...Stephanie

Carolyn A. Palmer...Sandra

By Bernard Farrell. Directed by Andrew Barnicle. Set by Dwight Richard Odle. Costumes by Julie Keen. Lighting by Paulie Jenkins. Sound by David Edwards. Production stage manager Rebecca Green.