“A ROOM without a vieeeeeew…” trilled Felicity Kendal. And just like that the household name and lingering aura of fame vanished. For the next two hours or so she was strait-laced Charlotte Bartlett, the old spinster and staunch stickler for decorum living vicariously through others – and never above sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong.

When a showbiz personality (of her calibre) nabs a starring role in a touring production, allowing the audience to see past their stature, suspend disbelief, and essentially forget who they are entirely is problematic. Few succeed in capturing the essence of their character so completely they convince us or rather bewitch us into looking beyond, well, themselves.

And if ever an actress had her work cut out to silence those voices whispering in our heads ‘it’s her, it’s Barbara’ , it’s Kendal.

Notoriety aside, she is somewhat older than E.M. Forster’s classic novel A Room With A View leads us to believe. Yet another hurdle to overcome.

Through her knack for comedy - from her carefully calculated flicks of the hand, dramatic stares and subtle but searing inflections - she skewers her own character and virtually every one else's. Her charater's ineptness and ludicrous obsession with propriety and etiquette, often at the expense of common sense and civility, is portrayed with lightness and finesse.

But enough gushing and back to the plot. In Forster’s comedy of manners cum romance, English rose Lucy Honeychurch is touring Italy with her prim spinster cousin Charlotte as chaperone. Charlotte is quick to step in when Lucy makes the mistake of fraternising with the woefully lower-class Mr Emerson and his son George, at their Florentine pensione. However, when she spies Lucy and George kissing, she has no option but to whisk the impressionable young lady away to Rome.

Back home at the family’s Surrey estate, Lucy becomes engaged to the eminently suitable (but priggish and oh so pretentious) Cecil Vyse – hilariously portrayed in all his glorious plumminess by Charlie Anson. Lucy has sworn Charlotte to secrecy over the kiss with George. Keeping schtum about the whole affair becomes rather complicated when the Emersons take a house in the village.

Kendal undeniably shoulders the performance with brio - injecting welcome slivers of pathos and naiveté in her portrayal of Charlotte; a good seed after all behind her prudishness. But she is in good company with the adaption’s stellar cast.

Playing Lucy, a young woman on the verge of emancipation, was Lauren Coe. Although she muffled her lines a couple of times, she recovered swiftly and was the right mix of the innocent and the feisty.

Jeff Rawle, who takes on the role of Mr Emerson, is a breath of fresh air as the voice of truth amid the fog of social conventions and double-meaning.

The riotous plot has not aged a day.

A Room With A View runs at the Theatre Royal Bath until Saturday.