THEATER REVIEWS / ‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’ : Fractured Family : The Young Artists’ Ensemble uses two casts in an ambitious and mature production of the work by Judith Guest.

Showing a surprising and ambitious choice of material, the Young Artists’ Ensemble of Thousand Oaks is presenting an adaptation of Judith Guest’s 1976 novel, “Ordinary People.”

The cast, none of them over 19 years old, is uniformly strong enough that the audience may well forget they are watching people (in effect) wearing their parents’ clothes.

At least one performance is remarkable by any standard.

Guest, a Michigan housewife, wrote the book “Ordinary People” while in her 30s. It was her first novel, a melodrama with tragic overtones that peel a layer or two off a superficially conventional upper middle-class family.

The 1980 film version won four Academy Awards including one for Best Picture.

The current production is a somewhat thin dramatization by Nancy Gilsenan.

Conrad (Con) Jarrett, the novel’s central figure, is a young man with emotional burdens that include his older brother’s drowning in a boating accident and his own subsequent suicide attempt.

Jarrett’s parents have trouble dealing with him. Cal, Con’s father, is a well-intentioned but ineffectual attorney; and mother Beth is, to be kind, extremely self-absorbed.

Con’s female friends have their own troubles, as well. One met him while both were undergoing treatment in a mental hospital, and the other, well, that’s something the audience can discover with Con.

Director Preston Sparks, in an effort to accommodate as many young actors as possible, has two largely separate casts performing on alternate evenings.

This review is based on the opening-night show last Thursday.

Justin Lee Smith, in the performance reviewed, gave a strong portrayal of Conrad, more than amply displaying the character’s bright and engaging side as well as his troubled soul.

Notable, too, were Robin Murphy as Conrad’s psychiatrist, Anna Silberberger as a young woman with whom Conrad becomes friendly, and Aaron Pyle as a fellow member of the school swim team.

(In the second, unreviewed cast, these roles are played by Jennifer Shevlin; Silberberger, again; and Steve Connell, respectively. Darrin Ingram is seen as Conrad).

Conrad’s parents in the first cast are Aaron Forster and Jennifer Scherpenborg; both are a little too soft-spoken, even for this intimate theater. The second cast’s parents are Josh Morrow and Jennifer Wessely.

Once again, the Arts Council Center Theater--essentially a living room--has been used imaginatively; credit Mark Andrew Reyes with the well thought-out lighting and director Sparks with the sound effects; Reyes and Sparks are credited with the set design.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“Ordinary People” continues through this weekend at the Arts Council Center, 482 Greenmeadow Road, in Thousand Oaks. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (Cast B), and Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. (Cast A). All tickets are $5.50; general admission. As the theater is quite small, reservations are essential. For reservations or further information, call 499-4355.