Mere fancy Friendship is history at PSC BY MEGAN GRUMBLING
	LETTICE AND LOVAGE By Peter Shaffer | Directed by Paul Mullins | Produced by Portland Stage Company | through Oct 23 | 207.774.0465

The motto " Enlarge, enliven, enlighten! " is not some particularly dramatic Levitra ad campaign but, rather, the credo of one Lettice Douffett (Cristine McMurdo-Wallis), an eccentric British tour guide with a history in theater and a passion for aggrandizement. In Lettice’s hands, even the dullest tour spot in England becomes a historically resounding monument, where Tudor-era nobles dined on hedgehog and puffin, Queen Elizabeth knighted the man of the house with a pearl-encrusted sword, and a beautiful 18-year-old cripple shut herself away for years in a room upstairs, singing broken marriage hymns. The vivid teller of such tales is the title character of Lettice and Lovage, a beautifully produced comedy about eccentricity, friendship, and aesthetics, which opens the season at Portland Stage Company.

If any of her narrative gems seem a little too bright to be the real thing, well, they seem so to some other people, too. As Lettice’s increasingly sensational tours of the Fustian House draw ever greater and more enthused crowds, her indifference to veracity comes to the attention of her fierce superior, Lotte Schoen (Waterville native Cynthia Mace), who summons, berates, and discharges the righteous Lettice. But the meeting of the two dissimilar but equally odd women starts something strong abrewing, and later, Lotte shows up at Lettice’s basement apartment with a lead for a new tour job.

Grateful, Lettice serves up goblets of what she calls " quaff " — a strong cordial made of mead, sugar, and lovage, an aromatic and myth-rich plant — and, truth-serum-like, a few rounds of quaff go a long way in bringing out the commonalities between the two women. They both, it turns out, are devoted to history’s architectural beauty and averse to becoming in any way " mere, " or irrelevant to history’s course.

Under Paul Mullins’s direction, McMurdo-Wallis and Mace make fine foils in every aspect of their stagecraft, from their voices and their movements to their garb. To Lettice’s lyrical floating and flitting, Lotte has an unapologetic solidity, thudding down the stairs like an ox. Likewise, Lotte’s voice has a blunt, unyielding quality — as does, often, her face — and a deep tone, while Lettice has a world of Shakespearean trill and variation in her vocal arsenal.

Costume designer Frank Champa has made Lotte’s figure as exaggeratedly lackluster (at one point she removes the coat of her tailored grey suit to reveal, comically, an identical grey blazer) as Lettice is engaging to the eye in a dressing gown of ornate green. In a signature and well-executed moment during the scene of her discharge, Lettice takes her leave of Lotte with a protest anecdote about the similarly wronged Mary, Queen of Scots, and what the rebellious queen wore to her own execution. She whips off her cape to reveal a red dress presumably just as brilliant as Mary’s, then quips, " A long goodbye to you, " on her way out the door.

A third main presence in PSC’s production is its astoundingly beautiful set, designed by Anita Stewart. Using printing technology practiced by only 20 other companies in the country, Portland Color has created a full-size, flexible backdrop bearing an enlarged portrait of Queen Elizabeth. When the setting is the Fustian House, a gorgeous wooden staircase dominates the stage; and when we switch over to first Lotte’s office and then Lettice’s apartment, truncated portions of Elizabeth’s portrait are repeated to make up the low wall of the room. The Tudor era is thus an enveloping presence at all times, both big and detailed — we can take in the Virgin Queen in full portrait deep upstage, and at the same time preoccupy ourselves with the just shape of her lips and the tuille at her throat.

Acting beneath the Tudor patron of the arts are a handful of Portland actors playing extras (including Romeo Tarantino as Felina, Lettice’s cat), and two local favorites have gleaming cameos. Maureen Butler, a member of the Children’s Theatre company who recently appeared in AIRE’s Dancing at Lughnasa, wrings her hands and bleats comic platitudes as Miss Framer, Lotte’s secretary. And Mark Honan, whom theater-goers will recall from title roles in PSC’s The Foreigner and the Stage at Spring Point’s The Miser, has a ball as a stiff lawyer rendered merry and skipping by the persuasion of Lettice’s theatrics.

Lettice and Lovage clocks in at just under three hours, and has a third act that feels a bit like a sequel to the play rather than its conclusion. Still, theater-goers partial to personality-driven plays, fine stagecraft, and wacky women will be as entertained as Lettice’s awestruck tourons. Mullins and his leading ladies keep their history moving, dynamic, and willfully quirky.

Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com