IT'S an impressive trio of talent: Siân Phillips, Gwen Taylor and Peter Shaffer.
And Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage has, like the inebriating Tudor "quaff", the power to tilt the world at a new angle.
The play also presents Siân Phillips with a monumental role, one that by her own admission is "quite as long as Hamlet".
She is more than equal to the task in bringing to the Arnaud stage a character of vibrant eccentricity.
Gwen Taylor as her adversary, the buttoned-down architect manqué, Lottie Schoen, provides an ideal foil, exuding a "certain grey integrity".
As a despairing Lettice Douffet tries to inject her guided tours of the "dullest house in England" with a little romance and excitement, she falls foul not only of the pedantic history buffs, but of boss, Lottie.
Veracity banishes sensationalism and Lettice with it into her basement "dungeon" flat, crammed with theatrical memorabilia.
Lettice rarely merely speaks, she performs. In fact she is no way "mere" person and the resulting conflicts with employers are, in her eyes, more personal triumphs than disasters.
Lettice clings to her equally bizarre mother's ethos, the three Es: enlarge, enlighten and enliven the lives of others.
Enliven she certainly does. Enlightenment, however, takes flights of fancy to new heights.
Dragged unwillingly into this thespian half-world is Lottie, whose own past is far from uneventful.
Unsurprisingly, such drama has its consequences and dragged into the bizarre scene is Bardolph. This is not the "merry companion to Falstaff" but a solicitor, played by John Normington with echoes of the bemused concern reminiscent of Peter Sallis.
Amusing but demanding concentration, like Lettice herself, the play also has some brilliantly comic visual moments such as Lottie's descent into quaff-induced inebriation.
If there's one criticism, it's that the piece is about 10 minutes too long; there's a small hiatus in the second act that allows the mind to drift.
That said, the chemistry between the leading ladies combines for a pyrotechnic denouement as comically potent as the Tudor tipple.
Lettice and Lovage runs at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, until tomorrow (Saturday).
Sandy Baker