Archive: Lettice and Lovage by Peter Shaffer

Shaffer's sharpest, wittiest, most passionate and elegant play.

Daughter of an actress who toured France with an all-female company playing only Shakespeare's history plays, Lettice Douffet (played by Marjorie McKee) has inherited both theatricality and eccentricity. Now employed as a tourist guide in a shabby stately home, she attempts to enliven its dull history with her own over-imaginative fantasies, until she is caught in the act and promptly sacked.

She retreats to her basement flat in Earl's Court, where she is visited by Lotte Schoen (played by Christine Hunt), the starchy Preservation Trust official who fired her. An unlikely friendship develops as they discover a shared loathing for the carbuncles of modern architecture and the stern, sensible Lotte is drawn into Lettice's attractive world of historical romance. This almost ends in tears after a nasty accident when the two ladies are enacting the execution of Charles I. But they manage to rise above this minor setback and continue their crusade to 'enlarge, enliven and enlighten' with renewed vigour.

Stagecraft's production was directed by Simon Boyes.

Season: 15-25 February 2005.

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