Theater Review - Lettice and Lovage

Lettice and Lovage

Written by Peter Shaffer

Directed by Steve Tague

Where: Studio Theater at the Roselle Center for the Arts

(University of Delaware, Newark, DE)
When: Wednesday, September 19, 2018

 Photo by E. Krape // Courtesy of the REP

The start of the University of Delaware's Resident Ensemble Players' 2018-19 season unfortunately fails to start with a bang with their production of the comedy Lettice and Lovage, a play that spouts a whole lot of words over its over two-and-a-half hour runtime, but lands very few of them with the expected laughs.  Beyond showcasing a growing, though tenuous, friendship between two women -- one who exudes eccentric theatricality and the other whose buttoned-up personality exhibits very little emotion -- Shaffer's play has very little plot and putters around for way too long without really getting anywhere.  I expected by the time the third act started to find some grand purpose for this play's existence, but that never manifested itself, nor did the third act create some theatrical set piece that at least warranted the need for this play to take itself to that third act.

REP members Kathleen Pirkl Tague as the flamboyant Lettice and Elizabeth Heflin as the stoically resolute Lotte are both fine, although the play does little for them to explore their characters to any great depths beyond caricature.  It's always a bit tough as a layman's critic unfamiliar with the source material to know whether it's an issue with the playwright or the direction of a production, but I really feel like it's the former that's the issue here.  I'm not sure there was an abundance of laughs for director Steven Tague to mine here and there certainly wasn't any thorough plot to punctuate with moments of excitement.

Taking place in the university's small Studio Theater, the audience finds itself in close proximity to the actors which is always a treat, but the black box theater with its cushioned folding-chair seats only exacerbates the play's three-act runtime with a large majority of the younger crowd in the audience getting antsy as the play progressed because of its lack of plot.  There were many comments upon exiting that I overheard from the more seasoned crowd that were saying things like "That was fun," or "That was so good," so maybe there's some age thing going on here.  I fall into the middle of these two age groups and I found myself strongly veering to the youths' indifference to this one.  I'm perhaps being overly harsh here -- this production isn't awful, it's just a bit of a nonstarter.  It's unfortunate, but Lettice and Lovage isn't one that I can say I loved in the slightest.