Mrs. Racket (Sharon Carpentier, left) and Miss Ogle (Erin Olson, right) advise Frances Touchwood (Ashley Kenner) in The Belle’s Stratagem.

Richard W. Dionne

There are reasons most people have never heard of The Belle’s Stratagem, the current offering from Warren’s 2nd Story Theatre. It’s an interminably talky play and more than a little stilted.

A young woman who is set to wed a childhood friend finds him indifferent toward her and goes about trying to win his love. Along the way there are side plots of intended seduction and tales of uppity women, at least as uppity as women got in the 1780s, when Hannah Cowley wrote this unknown romantic comedy.

But it takes forever to sort through the convoluted plot and at times you wonder what’s the point.

Ed Shea’s at times manic direction doesn’t help matters, either, as he tries to enliven an otherwise staid piece of writing with shouted lines and actors rolling on the floor.

In all, it’s not an easy production to warm up to.

But it is a joy to watch Gabby Sherba as the show’s scheming heroine, Letitia. She gets to show off her lovely singing voice and has a very funny scene when she tries to turn her fiancé’s indifference into to dislike, thinking it would be easier to win his heart if she were working from a strong emotion.

That’s when Sherba pops a stick of gum in her mouth and affects a Jersey accent, acting like a crude and undesirable wench. An upset Doricourt, her intended, threatens to leave town, but agrees to stay on for a costume ball, where Letitia works her deception.

The ball scene serves as a denouement, when Doricourt falls for Letitia, even though he doesn’t know it’s her at the time, and when one Courtall, who is lusting after another man’s wife, gets tricked into taking the wrong masked women home.

At one point Doricourt feigns madness in hopes of getting out of his wedding to Letitia. He is instead infatuated with the mystery woman from the masquerade ball. At that point, actor Patrick Poole gives this off-the-wall performance, flailing about and screaming.

Shea could have also reined in F. William Oakes a bit. Oakes, who was terrific as the crazed escaped con in 2nd Story’s Fuddy Meers this spring, just seems way too tightly wound as Letitia’s father, Hardy.

John Michael Richardson, a 2nd Story veteran who hasn’t been on stage much lately, brings his familiar shtick to the part of Flutter, a busybody prone to exaggeration. He’s a quirky, animated actor who brings a lot of energy to the show. And he is something else in heels and a gown, as he dressed as Cleopatra for the ball.

As he did with the earlier Beaux’ Stratagem, the Restoration comedy with a similar name but very different plot, Shea has gone with a setless stage, using just a pine crosswalk with seats in the round. But there are curtains at the entrances to the walkways. And those are forever getting snapped open or shut, which at some point becomes somewhat annoying.

Shea has set the play in the 1920s. Since The Belle’s Stratagem is a proto-feminist play, he said, he thought setting it during a time when women in this country won the right to vote was appropriate.

The Belle’s Stratagem runs through Aug. 30 at 2nd Story Theater, 28 Market St., Warren. Tickets are $25. Call (401) 247-4200.

cgray@projo.com