Lettice and Lovage

Play (1987)
by Peter Shaffer

With Lindsay Crouse (Miss Lettice Douffet), Marya Lowry (Miss Charlotte Schoen), Mark Cohen (Mr. Bardolph, Angry Man), Janelle Mills (Miss Framer)

The play opens with a very funny series of scenes in which Lettice (Lindsay Crouse), leading a tour of an historical house in England, gradually embellishes her delivery so that, despite its embellishing of the facts, takes on a seductive and entrancing flavor that draws its listeners in. Charlotte Schoen (Marya Lowry), Lettice’s boss, is not so entranced and a complication ensues, but one that leads eventually to a deeper engagement between these two characters in a touching and persuasive way.

Ultimately, there is not much plot in this very funny comedy, but that somehow seems not to matter. The two leads, Lindsay Crouse and Marya Lowry, are so on target and attuned to the delivery of their lines, and to the nature of the interaction that develops between their characters, that the drama simply arises out of their articulate and witty expostulations which come in rapid and stimulating succession.

Crouse is out of the world here, shaping the character of Lettice, an ordinary person when seen from one perspective, and an incredibly unusual and extraordinary one when seen from another. Her characterization is both impeccably executed and so over the top in a compelling way that she totally delivers, both in comedic, and in more deeply dramatic and endearing, dimensions.

Lowry’s character is the one that travels a further distance, and she too goes that distance with character, wit and appropriate pathos. As the character gradually emerges, as her complexities surface, and as she allows herself to engage with Lettice to a greater degree and with greater vulnerability, the soul of her being emerges and in turn brings out the soul of the relationship between them. Lowry, with the called-for initial severity, does a great job as she blossoms in this role, unfolding her character into the space of Lettice’s unbridled enthusiasms.
Together, Lowry and Crouse create a stunning and memorable pair.

As a lawyer who appears in Act III to investigate a potential lawsuit, Marc Cohen is wonderfully funny, and as he too is taken in by Lettice’s imaginative inventiveness, he shows all sorts of uproarious sides.

Peter Shaffer is best known for his play Amadeus, about Mozart and his rival Salieri, a serio-comic tale of opposition and jealousy, and for Equus, a dramatic play about a psychiatrist who is faced with the challenge of a boy whose creativity emerges as a form of psychosis.

In Lettice and Lovage, a hilarious comedy, but a moving one, the opponents are pitted against one another in a way that enables a kind of relational development that is somewhat different than in those other two other notable Shaffer works. In a way, it is lighter, but, in another way, it is more deeply about relationship, and thereby fulfilling in a different, and in some sense, more positive, way.

The sets for this production are truly ingenious, and the music, by Dewey Dellay, is lively, offbeat and very evocative.

This production is first rate and gives the opportunity for these two wonderful actresses to glitter in their individual portrayals, and persuasively and movingly as a pair.

– BADMan