Kansas Summer Theatre opened its season Friday with the enduring hit “The Fantasticks.” Written in 1959 by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, the show played more than 17,000 performances at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York before closing in 2002.

On a stage hung with dozens of white umbrellas, dominated by a huge sundial, this timeless story about the inexorable passage of time unfolds. The plot is Shakespearean: The Boy, Matt, falls for The Girl, Luisa, but the two are separated by The Wall between their parents’ gardens. Unlike the Montagues and Capulets, however, these parents want their children together. So they practice reverse psychology, realizing the more they object, the more the children will desire each other.

Luisa, touchingly played by Kate Hurley, is convinced life is a romance; she falls for Matt, partly because he is inaccessible. Likewise Matt (Evan Grosshans) must learn that the romance of getting the girl is often dispelled by the reality of living with her. Grosshans and Hurley are romantically convincing, but they’re even stronger in Act II when they discover that “This Plum is Too Ripe” and life is not all roses and romantic verse.

Cast members of Kansas Summer Theatre's production of The

The Narrator (Genaro Mendez), ably assisted by The Mute (Erin Burns), weaves a spell, reminding us to “try to remember” summer, youth and romance in the face of winter’s discontentment and disappointment. Entering the action as El Gallo, faculty artist Mendez is a rakish melodramatic villain. His rendering of “Try to Remember” from a ladder high above the stage is mesmerizing.

Dianne-Yvette Cook and Lawrence Henderson are the horticulturally mad parents Hucklebea and Bellomy, who scheme to throw their children together. More often played as two fathers – again reminiscent of “Romeo and Juliet” – the casting here creates a nice balance. The Boy’s Mother and The Girl’s Father offer a prickly, complex friendship in contrast to their children’s romance, although it is no less foolish at times.

Henry and Mortisha, or The Actor and The Actor Who Dies, are given panache by Justin Knudsen and Samara Naeymi, who revel in their turns as washed-up theater performers whose specialties are badly remembered Shakespeare and death scenes. Both symbolic and dimensional, they come from the outside, bringing humor, but also pain, loneliness and disappointment. With clothes and make-up suggesting crypt dwellers, they rise up out of the stage floor, shake off the dust and set about creating havoc. Yet there are moments of pathos, remembrances of past real or imagined theatrical glory, and we see glimpses of it as Henry admonishes us to “remember him in light.”

Director John Staniunas and movement consultant Leslie Bennett keep the actors constantly moving, spinning and twirling, caught in the whirl of emotional energy. Occasionally, they climb the ladder through the umbrella canopy for a glimpse beyond the comfort of their illusions. The elements of the set subtly complement the play’s themes. Robbie Jones’ dramatic scenic design and Tim Boeshaar’s lighting evoke this garden of illusion, and Kelly Vogel’s costume design is both whimsical and symbolic.