MILNE FOR GROWN-UPS? DON’T POOH-POOH THE IDEA

In her acid review of A. A. Milne’s “The House at Pooh Corner” for the New Yorker, Dorothy Parker said that by the fifth page she had “fwowed up.”

Parker would be in the minority at Stage Lee Strasberg. Adult audiences are packing the theater to see British actor Peter Dennis in “Bother!,” an evening of vivid, evocative readings from “Winnie-the-Pooh” and other Milne children’s classics.

In a recent interview at the Valley home of a friend, Dennis--trim and fit, boyishly ebullient at 53--explained why, Parker notwithstanding, adults are so intrigued.

“I would like to have said to (Parker), ‘Well, my dear, you’ve never been in love, never been (stepped) on, you don’t understand.’

“Milne was not a sentimentalist. There’s nothing precocious or precious about the stories or the characters. They’re real people.”

The characters are real enough to be based on acquaintances. Dennis’ model for Rabbit is a martinet of a second lieutenant he met while in the Army, who warmed up on learning that the two shared the same barber at “a rather posh gentleman’s establishment.”

Tigger combines the traits of a “wheeler-dealer second-generation flower seller called Teddy the Monk” and a “wonderful English Cockney actor named Brian Hall.

“Piglet is nobody in my vision, but somebody I’d like to meet.”

Dennis slips fluidly into the mannerisms and speech of each character as he speaks.

And the endearingly egocentric Bear of Little Brain? “Ah, Pooh, dear old Pooh. . . .” Dennis’ smile is downright fond.

He says he fell in love with the paunchy bear at the age of 36, after seeing an exhibit of the works of Ernest H. Shepard, Milne’s illustrator, at the Victoria and Albert Museum. With the zest of a late convert, Dennis collected Milne’s books and began reading the stories aloud to friends.

In 1976, he gave a reading at the Cambridge University Theatre in honor of Pooh’s 50th birthday. From then on, between film, stage and television roles, Dennis has performed the readings throughout England.

At the request of Milne’s son Christopher (the inspiration for the books), he read two stories at the 1981 London Zoo unveiling of Lorne McKean’s statue of the original “Winnie,” commemorating the author and his illustrator.

Dennis found his own penchant for plunging headlong into the new echoed in Milne’s whimsical tales.

His high-voltage enthusiasm for the world as a place of discovery led him to become an actor at 30, start reading children’s books at 36 (“I call them ‘people’ books”) and take up tennis at 47.

“I left school at 15. When I was 29 I saw my first play--’Look Back in Anger’ at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre--and I thought, that’s what I want to do, I’m going to have a bash at it.”

He resigned his position as personal assistant to the deputy chairman of a steel firm, auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and was accepted--after a season of playing small parts at the Birmingham theater.

“Bother!” is scheduled to close Jan. 24, but the show may extend beyond that, a possibility that fills Dennis with mixed emotions--a longer run would mean more time away from his wife, Diana, a professional gilder, and their home. “It’s a tiny house on a grotty street in London, but inside it’s magic.”

He continues pursuing the unlikely. Told he was wrong for the part, Dennis landed the small role of Field Marshal Montgomery in the coming ABC-TV miniseries “War and Remembrance” by presenting himself at the casting office in costume. He waited outside the office so long that his gummed-on mustache came unstuck.

“I was beginning to feel a bit of a banana,” he says.

Acting is a holiday for Dennis, who seems to thrive on challenge--or as he puts it, “I love taking my knickers off. I don’t think (in terms of) ‘can’t.’ I will not accept that Tiggers can’t climb trees. I’ll still have a go.”