Photo Credit: Ross E. Zentner
The entire world’s a stage for Lettice Douffet, the bored, middle-aged tour guide at an English country house. So she begins to “embellish” the stories on her tours of Fustian House (perhaps so named because of its lack of historic importance). As her stories grow more colorful, her tour groups seem to appreciate her dramatic touches. Renaissance Theatreworks has produced an excellent version of the Tony-nominated Lettice and Loveage with the help of two powerhouse actors and a skilled director.
This production allows audiences to admire the work of two of the city’s best-known actors, Laura Gordon (as Lettice) and Carrie Hitchcock (as Ms. Schoen, her supervisor). These days, Gordon is doing most of her work behind-the-scenes as a theater director, and it is a treat to see her onstage. Working together, they create pure bliss in Peter Shaffer’s (Equus, Amadeus) delightful English comedy.
As Lettice brings successive groups through the grand ballroom of Fustian House, the comedy continues to mount. Bravo to set designer Steve Barnes for creating this wood-paneled wonder, adorned with a staircase and some Elizabethan-era portraits on the walls. Only a few straight-laced viewers and purists dare to question Lettice’s reworked version of the house’s history. Finally, word of Lettice’s improvisation gets to Ms. Schoen.
In the supervistor’s antiseptic office, Lettice defends her actions. Nonetheless, she gets the sack. Ms. Schoen, feeling guilty afterwards, travels to Lettice’s modest apartment with news of a prospective job offer. The basement apartment is filled with theatrical ephemera, including chairs from the Shakespearean era, swords and masks on the walls. They all were props that once belong to Lettice’s mother, the owner of a traveling theatrical troupe.
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After Ms. Schoen marvels at the eclectic décor, she is offered a quaff of “loveage,” a medieval alcoholic beverage. At first suspicious of the unfamiliar drink, the uptight Ms. Schoen eventually relaxes under the drink’s influence and spills her guts. The two eventually discover a mutual love of English history and become friends.
Gordon is divinely theatrical throughout, and Hitchcock manages to slowly shed the conventional coil that hides her inner desires. In the second act, a relatively brief appearance by Lettice’s attorney (Bryce Lord) heightens this comic tale. The attorney eventually is caught up in Lettice’s harmless madness, to the point where he is recruited to reenact the “crime” Lettice supposedly has committed.
The whole enterprise builds to the point where it nearly topples over in its ridiculousness, and director Jenny Wanasek does a good job of keeping the play from spinning out of control.
Through May 3 at the Studio Theatre in the Broadway Theatre Center. For tickets, call 414.291.7800 or visit r-t-w.com.
