THEATER REVIEW : Shaw’s Missives Miss as Drama

Letters, she wrote. And so did he. But the missives sent back and forth between Mrs. Patrick Campbell and George Bernard Shaw, witty though they may have been, don’t necessarily add up to instant theater. And the Los Angeles Repertory Company staging of Jerome Kilty’s “Dear Liar” at the McCadden Place Theatre is hardly Shaw at his sharpest.

A duo-drama verging on a concert reading, “Dear Liar” samples the 40 years’ worth of ditties written by the notoriously crotchety playwright-thinker (the uneven but nicely quirky William H. Bassett) and the famous actress (low-key Lynne Griffin) on whom he had a crush. Their repartee is twinkly, all right--a souvenir of the days when people knew how to write letters--but unless you’re a die-hard Shaw nut, the play’s more of an artifact than a drama.

* “Dear Liar,” McCadden Place Theatre, 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood, (213) 466-1767. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends Oct. 27. $7.50. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.