Theater Reviews : ‘Bus Stop’ Has Just the Ticket : Revival of William Inge’s classic reminds us that good dialogue is the key to great ensemble performances.

COSTA MESA — There’s a surprise at the Theatre District’s funky barn-style space, adjacent to the Anti-Mall here. While the neighboring cluster of shops for Gen-Xers and Pre-Xers preens with studied post-industrial style (the Anti-Mall is a kind of “Waterworld” to shop in), the theater’s current show is out of another world entirely. William Inge’s “Bus Stop” is back, and it’s good to hear it again.

Especially when it’s this well done, as if the 40-year-old play were new. Nobody writes like Inge anymore. Indeed, with his painful weakness for on-the-nose dialogue, perhaps nobody should. But it has been too long since anyone wrote with his sense of group ensemble chatter and visionary insight.

One of the best qualities of Mario Lescot’s staging is that we never sense how hard it really is to write for a group of characters stuck in the same room with each other for more than two hours. And, because nobody writes like this anymore, today’s actors aren’t always used to functioning as an ensemble. If Lescot’s actors aren’t, they don’t show it.

Like the characters, they grow closer as time goes on. In Grace’s bus stop diner, a motley crew huddles from a cold Kansas storm. But they’re warmed by the heated passions of Bo (P.J. Agnew), a cowboy who wants nightclub singer Cherie (Gwen Yeager) to share his Montana spread with him, and who won’t take no for an answer.

For young waitress Elma (Shannon Hunt), Cherie is a window into a world of desire. For Grace (Suzan Kane), the storm is a good excuse to get in a quickie with Carl the bus driver (Bill Ertle). The losers in “Bus Stop” are the men who can’t get love: Gerald (Steve Howard), a lecherous, alcoholic, unemployed philosophy professor; and Bo’s trusty bud Virgil (Steve McCammon). The former is much too in love with himself; the latter knows only the brotherhood of cowhands: No gals allowed.

This may not be a world-beating version of a minor American classic, but it does some wonderful things. For one, it presents the play as a comedy with a dash of melancholy. Very often with “Bus Stop” revivals, we get melancholia with a dash of comedy (the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s self-consciously serious revival in the ‘80s comes to mind). The emphasis at the Theatre District leavens the play’s kitchen-sink naturalism and heightens Inge’s keen, wonderful ruminations of the inescapable absurdities of love.

*

Agnew plays Bo’s puzzlement at Cherie’s rejections with an unabashed, total lack of guile. Yeager suggests an Ozark kid who never will make it big but who does know what her looks can do to men. Cherie’s moment of discovery--that all she wants is a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t--comes across as too rehearsed, but her conquest of Bo is a really rewarding piece of character development.

Some of Lescot’s actors are so natural that it’s scary. Kane seems like she’s been behind that counter her whole life, and McCammon is exactly the kind of gentle giant to quell Bo’s frisky unruliness. Above all, Hunt dances about the stage with a fun sense of innocence, blissfully assuming that everyone wants to be her friend.

Howard does his best with the impossibly prosaic role of the professor, while Bob Fimiani is all calm authority as the town sheriff. Ertle’s anachronistically urbane bus driver is the one casting glitch.

The set, by something called Two Blue Chairs Inc., is hardly blue but paper-bag-brown; it’s the kind of place you want to get out of, not stay in. David Jacobi’s lights could be smoother as they shift the focus across the cafe from conversation to conversation. Bonnie Vise’s sound is the effectively gloomy counterpoint to as bright and comedic a “Bus Stop” as you’re likely to see for a while.

* “Bus Stop,” the Theatre District, 2930 Bristol St., Costa Mesa. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Aug. 20. $15. (714) 435-4043. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

P.J. Agnew: Bo

Gwen Yeager: Cherie

Shannon Hunt: Elma

Steve Howard: Gerald

Suzan Kane: Grace

Steve McCammon: Virgil

Bob Fimiani: Will

Bill Ertle: Carl

A Theatre District production of a play by William Inge, directed by Mario Lescot. Set: Two Blue Chairs Inc. Lights: David Jacobi. Sound: Bonnie Vise.