This venture, by Jordan Harrison, is about gender. But it shines most when it makes a case for theatre and its transformative ethos. It's 1927, and the Elks club is putting on a performance to benefit children. It has chosen a period play in which the men dress as women, and that isn't going over too well with the town's temperance ladies. The most strait-laced of all is an accordion-playing teetotaler named Dorothy (Alicia Wollerton), the wife of Miles (Christopher Goodson), the lead actor in the show. His two compatriots, True (Joe Fria) and Casper (Ryan Spahn), are eager to get started, and they finally get Dorothy's grudging assent. The construct of the play balances scenes of the actors in their Midwestern town with the exotic 18th-century French characters they play. There is some confusion for the audience with Harrison's ambitious gender swapping, as actors morph into their opposite-gender counterparts. The sincerity of the Sacred Fools ensemble in capturing the seductive draw of dramatics makes up for the preternatural leanings of the script.
The women are rounded out by Lorna (Kimberly Atkinson), a one-time movie makeup artist, and Zina (Kathleen Mary Carthy), the histrionic lesbian director. The interactions among all these characters in understanding the male and female in us all is intriguing and often hilarious, but the actors never lose sight of the souls of their characters. The production would be far less effective were it not for the fine acting, skillfully led by director Kiff Scholl.
Credit Jade Winters' delightful costumes and Joel Scher's fetching wigs and makeup for giving the guys inspiration. Notable is Spahn as a young man whose budding awareness of his sexuality gives him pause. Wollerton, too, is fine as a woman who confronts her inner desires and tries to reconcile them with the societal strictures of the time.
Presented by and at Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Dr., Hollywood. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m. Mar. 23-Apr. 28. (310) 281-8337. www.sacredfools.org.