THEATER REVIEW : Very Nice to Make Your Acquaintance, ‘Helen’ : In this Cal State Fullerton production, director Meredith Wright introduces the audience to one of the first romantic comedies. What a refreshing choice!

Since professional theater has long demonstrated not-so-benign neglect of Greek drama, and non-pros wouldn’t have a clue with it, about the only place in this country you’re likely to hear any kind of Greek theater is on campus, where it’s supposedly studied.

The good news out of Cal State Fullerton’s drama department, where Euripides’ “Helen” is being staged in the school’s Arena Theatre, is that there’s something for the audience to study.

That doesn’t mean that “Helen” is a tough, grim or even profound lesson. To the contrary: Judging by director Meredith Wright’s handling of a translation by James Michie and Colin Leach, it seems amazing that “Helen” isn’t better known than it is, since it really is one of the very first examples of romantic comedy.

Whether or not Shakespeare knew of the play, we can’t help but make the connections between this tale of Helen (Christine Sheppard)--she who launched a thousand ships against Troy and was rescued from Egypt by her warrior husband, Menelaos (Brad Hoffner)--and Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” or even “The Tempest.”

This is neither wailing Greek tragedy, nor high comedy a la Aristophanes. “Helen” is different.

Euripides’ own Helen is different, too. His portrait goes head-on against Homer’s depiction of Helen as the beautiful woman held by Troy in a plot by the jealous gods. This Helen was never in Troy (instead, the gods planted an illusory one, a “false Helen”).

Thus, to serve Euripides’ anti-war sentiment, the bloody and tragic Trojan War was based on an illusion. Even though she is from Sparta, the Athenian Euripides truly likes this woman.

Imagine a Yankee playwright making a heroine of the wife of Robert E. Lee in a drama written during the height of the Civil War, and you get an idea of the nerve behind “Helen.”

But rather than the anger--and flabbiness--of Euripides’ much better-known “The Trojan Women,” “Helen” is a spry, light entertainment focused on a woman’s desire for freedom and the peace of marriage, celebrating a world where “the best magic is a balanced mind and a little common sense.”

Amy Schaumburg as the leading voice of the chorus does this and many another line with a nod and a wink, and Wright has generally gotten it across to her cast that this is light-years from “Oedipus Rex.”

Although Sheppard and Hoffner are too young to suggest this couple as a paragon of middle-aged love, they do seem to have the hots for each other. While Michael Miranda is ineffectually wooden as young Pharoah Theoklymenos planning to wed Helen himself, he is nicely thunderstruck and peeved when he learns the elaborate tricks played on him to whisk Helen away. Here, “Helen” becomes a close cousin to the fairy-tales of the hero stumping the king.

Like a lot of American college Shakespeare, Wright’s Greek experiment painfully lacks trained voices. The Greeks wrote sung texts, full of aria/monologues and broad declarative and expository passages. They are the sections today’s dramaturges would ask to be rewritten--though, to be fair, they do sound foreign to us. Unfortunately, they also sound foreign to today’s actors.

Sheppard has some of the voice and expression for Helen’s laments, and Schaumburg leads by example, while Katie Zerga displays the most impressive vocal cords of all as the mischievous Portress and Hera.

But the poetry otherwise goes flat here, and no amount of Peter Gabriel music (on tape) or sonic overlay by percussionist (Nick Hoffman) makes it any easier on the ear.

It’s a bit easier for the eye, especially designer Mark Chotiner’s tilted disc set, which encourages the sense that we’re watching an amphitheater staging. Karen Wight’s costumes take too much after Chotiner’s willowy curtains, and the prancing about with the chorus, Aphrodite et al. waving their chiffon comes perilously close to someone’s bad lampoon of arch Greek drama.

Which is what “Helen” precisely isn’t.

* “Helen,” Cal State Fullerton Arena Theatre, State College Boulevard at Nutwood Avenue, Fullerton. Thursday-Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 5 p.m. Ends Sunday. $4-$6. (714) 773-3371. 1 hour, 45 minutes. Christine Sheppard: Helen

Brad Hoffner: Menelaos

Michael Miranda: Theoklymenos the young Pharoah

Amy Schaumburg: Chorus Leader

Raylene Dodson: Theonoe

Katie Zerga: Portress/Hera

Jannet Kawai: Theonoe’s Attendant/Teukras

Debi Bain: Leda/Young Helen

Adreanna Rivoli: False Helen/Artemis

A Cal State Fullerton drama department production of Euripides’ drama. Directed by Meredith Wright. Set: Mark Chotiner. Lights: John Vasquez. Costumes: Karen Wight. Masks and Make-up: Natalie May Carter. Sound: Terry Bailey.