THEATRE PREVIEW:

“KANDIS CHAPPELL / PRIVATE LIVES” at the Old Globe Theatre

Published in San Diego Union-Tribune April, 1996

Onstage, she positively drips glamour and sophistication. Offstage, she could be the girl next door. In fact, she is.

Kandis Chappell graduated from Kearny High School and San Diego State University. Her father was a hairdresser of Sicilian ancestry, her mother a waitress of German descent. She was hardly to the manor born. And yet, as San Diego audiences have repeatedly observed (most recently in the Old Globe's world premiere of Stephen Sondheim's "The Doctor is Out"), she can be exceedingly witty and urbane.

"I don't know where it came from," Chappell admits. She's tall and leggy, amiable, bright-eyed even without makeup, with cropped reddish hair and a genuine warmth.

"In college, two friends took me under their wings and showed me a whole other world... My father was a movie buff, so I grew up on the movies of the thirties and forties. Then I started at the Globe as a teenager, doing tech work, and watching everything."

Her first production at the Globe was in 1975, and there have been nearly two dozen since. She's played regional theaters all over the country, but she still considers the Globe her theatrical home. Now she's come back to play the extremely clever, sharp-tongued, engaging Amanda in Noel Coward's 1930 comedy of manners, "Private Lives."

It's been an uncanny series of coincidences. The play's third revival at the Globe was proposed by director Nicky Martin, who had to pull out because of New York commitments. When associate artistic director Sheldon Epps was asked to direct, he also had a scheduling conflict, so the play was switched from the second to the third season slot at the Cassius Carter Center Stage.

Meanwhile, Chappell was otherwise engaged, preparing for the Broadway debut of "Getting Away with Murder" (the revised title of the Sondheim comedy-thriller). She was disappointed not to be able to appear in "Private Lives," but the Big Apple was irresistible. Unfortunately, the show was excoriated, and closed in two weeks (after a month of previews).

"It was devastating," Chappell recalls. "We were all stunned. I was sitting with my wig person, saying it's a hard lesson to learn in life, but when a door closes in your face, something better is waiting. Literally in the middle of the conversation, the phone rang." One week before rehearsals started, she was asked to join the cast of "Private Lives."

"It was a miracle," Chappell continues. "Not only was I the only one in the ["Murder"] cast to have another job, but I got to come home and play the fabulous role of Amanda." Not only that, but she opened in the same role, in an SDSU production, 26 years ago to the day.

"I think it's a role I was born to play," she confesses. Director Sheldon Epps agrees. "Kandis has a quick mind, and she's funny," he says. "She captures that snappy intelligence -- very clever, very brittle -- but with real heart. She has wonderful technique and a sense of style, but she also has truth and honesty, and that elevates everything above the level of just bon mots."

The play certainly is rife with bon mots. Written as a vehicle for Coward's friend and co-star, the comical Gertrude Lawrence, the farcical piece, title and all, reputedly came to Coward in a dream, and he penned it in four days.

The story concerns an elaborate coincidence: Elyot and Amanda, divorced for five years, wind up in adjacent French hotel suites on their respective second honeymoons. Realizing that they are still mad about each other, they decide to run off. Havoc ensues.

Their repartee is quick, crisp, acerbic and amusing. But there is a dark, un-Politically-Correct undertone to the play. The relationship between Amanda and Elyot is so emotional, so intense, that it often turns violent. As Elyot puts it, "Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs."

"This is very much a period piece," explains director Epps. "People talked differently, thought differently... There's a line about [the couple's] screaming and fighting being an expression of their passion. They just love each other too much... Audiences may gasp, boo or hiss at some of the lines, but there's nothing wrong with interactive theater."

"For Amanda and Elyot," adds Chappell, "wit is an aphrodisiac. Nobody else plays with words like they do; it's very exciting for them. I think it's very exciting, too. I grew up playing games. That's as strong as acting is in my dreams. But in certain ways, I'm actually pretty shy. I just read a biography of Maggie Smith, where she said, 'One's nothing off' [meaning offstage]. That's how I feel. Whatever it is I have, it all happens onstage."

DATEBOOK

"PRIVATE LIVES"

The farcical Noel Coward comedy opens on May 4 (previews May 1-3). Performances Tuesday-Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m. Through June 9. Cassius Carter Center Stage, Balboa Park. $22-38; 239-2255.

PAT LAUNER is a freelance writer and the theater critic for KPBS-FM.

©1996 Patté Productions Inc.