Amy Freed's Restoration Comedy isn't a meta-commentary on the frivolous plays of the 17th century so much as a CliffsNotes® study guides version of two such plays—Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift and John Vanbrugh's snarky response The Relapse—stripped of their verbal gymnastics and inconvenient subplots and crammed with physical comedy and modern clichés. (Characters refer to their "salad days" and say they've got "places to go, people to see"; meanwhile, rain falls on parades, wagons are hitched to stars, etc.) Rep artistic director David Esbjornson is clearly interested in bringing theater history to bear on modern productions, but unless he finds smarter interpreters of his vision, audiences will lose their appetite for the original along with the copy.

A dissolute rake named Loveless (Stephen Caffrey) returns from a long sojourn abroad, penniless and under the happy delusion that his wife Amanda (Caralyn Kozlowski, quite good) is dead. Virtuous Amanda has been mourning the wretch, and, upon hearing he's alive, rejoices. Mr. Worthy (Neil Maffin) says the only way she'll convince Loveless to love her again is if she poses as a lady libertine and seduces her husband into cuckolding himself. (In the original, a case of smallpox has, hilariously, rendered Amanda both more alluring and totally unrecognizable; in this version, we get no explanation for why he doesn't recognize her.) Their plot to sow marital accord works, only to be undone in Act 2, about which the nicest thing I have to say is: Suzanne Bouchard isn't annoying. Set, costumes, music, and Sharon Ott's direction are all slightly overbaked.