Odyssey’s ‘Opossum Tails’: A Moving Portrait of Family : Stage: The funny yet serious play within a play is youth theater at its best.

You have time to take your 7- to 12-year-olds to “Opossum Tails” at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles--it will be around for a while. But miss it, and you and your child have missed a first-class example of quality youth theater.

“Opossum Tails,” written by Debbie Devine, Jay McAdams and the Glorious Players, is a play within a play that gets at the heart of what it means to be a family.

It begins with the adult Glorious Players troupe, warming up in the lobby in their roles as actors preparing to “audition” for a children’s play about an opossum family. Audience members join in the creative movement games.

Once inside the theater, Devine, offstage, puts the actors through their paces, directing them in readings, then in pieces of the opossum play. They soon get comfortable together, teasing and helping each other between scenes, just like a family, except for Trish (Jessica Straus), who rejects the communal warmth. Her aloofness irritates and worries the rest of the cast.

That conflict is reflected and magnified in the opossum play scenes. When Father Opossum (Erick Melton) is killed by Neptune the Cat (Mark Towner), Mother Opossum (Cheryl Crabtree) can’t bear having sole responsibility for two growing sons.

Rizzo (Towner again), the rebellious eldest son, is the focus of her anger and anxiety and he runs away from home. His younger brother, Ricky (McAdams), the peacemaker, ends up being captured by Kelly (Straus again), an unhappy, recently orphaned young girl who has just come to live with her grandfather (Melton).

In the end, these three uneasy family units (actors, opossums and orphan girl and grandfather) choose to put conflict behind them and celebrate their lives together.

Sound serious? It is. It’s also funny, moving and real--and punctuated by star turns from audience volunteers.

The Players’ assured performances, under Devine’s intelligent direction, are complemented by Maureen Kennedy Samuels’ lively choreography, Richard Allen’s music, colorful costumes by Lois Barrett and McAdams and the skillfully constructed opossum heads created by Keith Mitchell.

“Opossum Tails,” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, Saturday, 1 p.m., indefinitely. For ages 7 and up. $6.50; (310) 477-2055.

Benefit: The Chicken Soup Theatre Company, a troupe of young people ages 7 to 14, under the direction of 16-year-old Dana Lightstone, will present “Just So,” a musical version of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories,” in March, with proceeds going to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

Performances will be March 6 and 13 at 3 p.m. and March 7 and 14 at 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. at the Groundlings Theatre in West Hollywood. Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for children. Information: (310) 842-6742.