Design for Laughing

Staging Noel Coward comedies is serious business. Indulge too ecstatically in the froth, and you risk exposing the slender thread of artifice for all to see. Probe too deeply for larger social implications or real-life lessons, and you become the Grim Reaper of comedy. Happily, the Chamber Theater's rewarding production of the 1925 classic Hay Fever, directed by Frank E. Reilly, charts a course right down the middle and thereby manages to succeed handsomely.

Reilly sets the action in 1929 -- perhaps as some cautionary reminder to himself about the consequences of overspeculation -- and delivers a weekend with the extravagantly dramatic Bliss family. Apparently bored to tears with their bucolic existence -- and unbeknownst to each other -- they've invited four virtual strangers to their country home for a weekend of theatrics.

Matriarch Judith (Margaret Schenck), an actress languishing in retirement, flirts to entertain herself. Her latest distraction is boxer Sandy Tyrell (Judd Dunning), who, believing her to be a widow, imagines himself in love with her. Her very-much-alive husband, David (Richard Lindstrom) -- author of yet another overripe novel and himself given to outside romantic diversions -- has summoned the naive and bewildered Jackie Coryton (Laura Holliday) to play his muse. Their two post-adolescent children, Sorel (Carrie Paff) and Simon (Benjamin Privitt), are getting pointers from Judith's former dresser, Clara (Margie Pratchenko) -- now their lackadaisical housemaid -- and are busily honing their skills via their guests: Sorel's is Richard Greatham (Simon Vance), a boringly stuffy diplomat; Simon's is Myra Arundel (Krista Strutz), a sophisticated socialite who's using Simon to get to David.

Coward wrote the play in a feverish three days and based it on the family of actress Laurette Taylor and her novelist husband, Hartley Manners, whose hospitality fed and sheltered Coward during a lean period before he achieved fame and fortune. Taylor never forgave his indiscretion, and who could blame her? The Blisses are rapturously self-centered, astoundingly vain, and only interested in outsiders for the entertainment value they can provide. Guests are bait, and family members circle them hungrily, taking little nips now and again. But it's all in fun, they assure the victims and each other. No harm done. ("Wait!" you can almost hear them call out. "Why are you leaving?")

Reilly has entered into the spirit of things with intelligence and enthusiasm. The Blisses are comfortably ensconced in a postcard-perfect English country house (designed by Chuck Waters) whose French windows open onto a painted backdrop of a garden. The flatness of the set is intentional, and in his staging Reilly continually emphasizes the two-dimensionality of the characters. Everything is a pose, and every pose a picture, up to and including the tableaux created by the entire group as they gather for dinner or tea or evening parlor games. It's all fluff, and that's the point. What makes it bearable and very funny is the Blisses' utter delight in acting out for each other and their complete and total candor in admitting it to their guests.

Coward's stroke of genius in Hay Fever was to endow otherwise artificial caricatures -- the Blisses -- with self-knowledge. They are equal-opportunity creators and destroyers, and when their playthings object, they kindly try to explain the rules so that each guest can enter into the proceedings with something like the Blisses' sense of pleasure. The newcomers never quite find their footing in this household that -- rather shockingly for any time period -- prefers utter candor to polite deception. That the guests seem to prefer romantic illusion over the game is, quite simply, their problem.

This staging is a deft balancing act between performances -- which range from competent (the men) to inspired (the women) -- and visual effects. Reilly has used the attractive setting and glorious period costumes (uncredited) as though they were yet other characters. The sofa, for example, sits coquettishly off center, and becomes the accomplice to various amorous advances. The actors use it as though they were gymnasts on a balance beam. Their athletic maneuvers quickly pin their opponents in swift, confident, and graceful moves.

Coward's affection and energy were clearly tilted toward the female characters, and this cast does him proud. As Sorel, Paff uses her long, flexible limbs to utmost effect. She keeps her gestures high, as though to lower her arms would be to consign this high-flying character to the depths of the miserably earthbound. She prances and poses, stopping only long enough to register an admirer's appreciation, and her exaggerated accent-with-pout makes comic hay of such lines as, "I'm proud of being feminine."

Schenck's Judith is a marvel of timing and affectation. This matriarch takes unending delight in every intrigue and challenge, and seems to live for moments when she can gather her oversize children to her ample bosom. When she plants herself opposite Sandy on that sofa, kicks off her shoes, and grabs him with her feet, Schenck reveals Judith's surprising strength and tenacious agility. Later, in a glori-ous white-fringed evening dress, she seems to shimmer with sexuality and mischief.

Less memorable but hardly less competent is Strutz as Myra. As the only self-confessed gold digger, the thin veneer of her charm wears off quickly when David -- played sturdily by Lindstrom -- foils her ambitions and confuses her by dismissing his own novels as bad.