Alyson Hannigan

LONDON — The fake orgasm scene is about the most real moment in the London stage premiere of "When Harry Met Sally ...," the much-loved Billy Crystal-Meg Ryan movie that has now become a harmless, bland star vehicle for television stars Luke Perry and Alyson Hannigan.

Perry, star of "Beverly Hills 90210," and Hannigan, Willow from "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer," are the latest American TV imports to try their luck on the British stage. You can bet they will not be the last.

One of the biggest hits of this past summer was a West End revival of the David Mamet play, "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," that featured Matthew Perry from "Friends" making his British stage debut.

It was almost a sure bet to transpose "Harry" from screen to stage. Audiences tend to respond to titles they already know, which is partly why "The Producers" and "Hairspray" have been such huge successes.

The difference here is that those Broadway musicals took their source films largely as a jumping-off point. The stage "Harry," though, is a case of slavish, almost pointless, imitation: It copies Nora Ephron’s screenplay nearly moment by moment - sometimes line by line - without ever capturing the film’s easy charm or wit.

The 1989 movie, directed by Rob Reiner, remains best remembered for the restaurant scene featuring Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm. The scene arrives on cue in the play near the end of Act 1. The throes of passion are moaned for optimal comic effect by Hannigan, who has inherited Ryan’s screen role as the perky, fastidious Sally. But too much of stage director Loveday Ingram’s production comes across as a Cliff Notes version of the film.

And the theater adaptation doesn’t even have Reiner’s mother on hand to utter the now classic quip, following Sally’s cries of ecstasy: "I’ll have whatever she’s having." In the play, the line has been handed to a campy young man sitting in a booth next to the couple, and it lands without comic effect.

Sure, a few of the details are different. In the movie, Harry meets Sally when they share a car ride from Chicago, where they have been at college, to New York. Marcy Kahan’s stage adaptation starts with budding journalist Sally, age 21, already in Manhattan, where rising corporate lawyer Harry arrives to paint her apartment.

The two have a love-hate relationship and take more than a dozen years to decide what we can tell from the start: However much they may spar, the pair are every bit as meant for each other as the numerous couples whose filmed testimonials of affection appear throughout the film.

The stage production includes its own droll sequence of such testimonials - a screen drops in between scenes to project them - including that of two gay men who first met during a Metropolitan Opera production of "Der Rosenkavalier."

In pointed comparison with the slow build of romance that drives the central plot, Harry and Sally’s two best friends, Jack (Jake Broder) and Marie (Sharon Small), fall in love almost instantly. They must then wait for Harry and Sally to see beyond the Platonic confines of their rapport.

The portly Broder all but steals the show from stage neophytes Hannigan, who has never done theater at all before, and Perry, whose limited experience includes the Broadway revival of "The Rocky Horror Show."

Though engaging, Perry is too lightweight a presence for the part, and he doesn’t sound comfortable with the Jewish-etched zing of Ephron’s writing, which was so perfectly matched to Crystal.

Hannigan is more audible, certainly, but she brings a somewhat shrill quality to the less rewarding of the two leading roles. No wonder the fake orgasm shows the actress at her best: For that moment, at least, Hannigan looks as if she is having fun, and the audience, however briefly, is, too.

The play, which opened Feb. 20, is booked through May 29 at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket.