Lettice and Lovage, Portchester Players, Portchester Community Centre.

IN a world where mediocrity and blandness are often accepted as the norm, anyone who can brighten our lives, albeit by embellishment and exaggeration, has to be encouraged.

This is the premise of Peter Shaffer's award-winning rallying-cry against "the mere", voiced by Lettice Douffet, a tour guide in an uninteresting castle, who discovers a gift for blending fact and fiction, to the delight of her visitors.

Sadly, her melodramatic monologues get her dismissed by her boss Lottie Schoen, though a friendship then gradually grows between the two women as they find themselves kindred spirits in a world beset by "the average".

Kay Sumpner hit just the right note as the initially domineering Lottie, and when drunk on Lettice's special cordial, produced some blissfully funny comic moments.

Jacqueline Arnott's Lettice fell slightly short of the quirkiness demanded by the character, though both actors made much of Shaffer's sparkling dialogue.