Don't be confused by the title: Lettice and Lovage serves up a tale of white lies, not green vegetables.

Local production company The Next Stage will present eight performances of the play Lettice and Lovage this weekend and next weekend in the upstairs studio space at the State Theatre, 130 W. College Ave.

Lettice, spelled with an "i," refers not to the green vegetable, but to the show's protagonist, Lettice Douffet, portrayed by State College resident Michelle Miller-Day, a communication arts and sciences professor.

Douffet is a tour guide for a stately British historical house who believes the lectures she gives to visitors aren't exciting enough, Miller-Day said.

"She's a middle-aged, frustrated actress ... who tries to make everything more interesting than it actually is," she said.

After seeing the visitors' reactions to her embellished history, Douffet continues straying further from the truth until her boss, Lotte Schoen, played by Elaine Meder-Wilgus, of State College, finds out.

Schoen, a strict, rigid woman, begins to see the positive side of Douffet's outlook on life and the two become friends despite their differences, said Meder-Wilgus, who owns Webster's Bookstore Café, 128 S. Allen St.

"Through her friendship with Lettice, [Schoen] discovers the childhood side of her that she's been keeping under wraps for a lot of years because of her job and her position in society," Meder-Wilgus said.

Lettice and Lovage was written in the late 1980s by British playwright Peter Shaffer and won two Tony Awards in 1990 for Best Actress and Best Featured Actress in a Play. Shaffer wrote the play for famous British actress Maggie Smith, who most recently has portrayed Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter movie series.

State College director Caitlin Osborne said the actors were challenged by the British accent and interesting word choice of the characters.

"The language itself is pretty important to the play," she said. "The main character not only has a love of history but a love of language, so her turn of phrase is important."

Both Miller-Day and Meder-Wilgus will use British accents to accurately convey the characters' mannerisms.

Meder-Wilgus said she consulted with a friend from London to portray certain words accurately.

"The key is not to make it a caricature," she said. "Otherwise, it becomes a show about the accent and not the show itself."

Miller-Day described the comedy in the play as "a cross between Monty Python-stupid and dry British humor."

This will be the third play presented by The Next Stage production company in the upstairs space of the State Theatre, which seats about 50 audience members, since this summer.

"It's very small," said Mary Skees, the play's producing artistic director and co-founder of The Next Stage. "The challenge is getting everything in that space."

The company usually produces small-scale, lesser-known works of award-winning playwrights, Skees said.

"We like to do things that you won't otherwise see [in State College]," she said.Lettice and Lovage is a straightforward comedy, which is something the company usually doesn't perform, Skees said, but it still has a message.

The elements of friendship and the elements of history are two of the central themes, Skees said.

"If somebody's stretching the truth a little bit," she said, "at what point does that become a problem?"