A Noise Within avoids the pitfalls with an articulate, intelligent staging.

American interpretations of Greek tragedy can be tragic, all right. Portentous choral moaning, the kind of thing sent up so well in the MGM musical “The Band Wagon.” Braying, clueless actors attempting to climb a theatrical Mt. Everest, reaching only Mt. Baldy instead.

Written around 430 BC and one of seven surviving plays by Sophocles, “Oedipus the King” taunts us, daring us to try, try it again. It’s certainly still good for one-liners. So securely has this stark, profoundly ironic chunk of granite found its way into the pop culture mainstream that even last weekend’s most popular movie, “Analyze This,” features a gag about the king of Thebes, his inadvertent acts of patricide and incest, and subsequent downfall.

Glendale’s classical company A Noise Within has taken the dare, producing its first Greek tragedy. The results are impressive, free of most of the usual obfuscation, traps and trappings. If the production lacks the big, bone-rattling stuff it takes to transport us, well, that stuff comes along only so often. This staging has its own modest but undeniable virtues: swiftness, agility, an unusually conversational tone.

It starts with the translation. Director Art Manke and company chose Kenneth Cavander’s crisp adaptation. Here are the opening lines of Oedipus in the Cavander version:

“My children, why do you crowd and wait at my altars? Olive branches . . . and wreaths of sacred flowers--Why do you bring these, my people of Thebes?”

Here’s the same as translated earlier this century by J.T. Sheppard:

“My children, sons of Cadmus and his care,

Why thus, in suppliant session, with the boughs

Enwreathed for prayer, throng you about my feet. . . . “

Sheppard’s Oedipus talks that way the entire play. Without slanging it up, Cavander allows Oedipus to sound like a human being on planet Earth, surrounded by other humans.

Director Manke takes his cue from the text, complementing its linguistic ease. He and his designers locate “Oedipus” in a timeless setting, shadowy (it’s midnight, after all) and steely. Scenic designer Michael C. Smith’s playing area is dominated by a crossroads of sorts, reminiscent of “where the three roads meet,” the location of Oedipus meeting his own destiny years earlier. Beverley Thies’ quick-witted lighting design isolates the king and others in moments of self-reflection.

Robertson Dean’s Oedipus embodies the production’s strengths and limitations. He plays the king like a man in a hurry, a ruler at once vain and worthy, impatient with everyone. His early scenes with the holy soothsayer Teiresias (a gravely effective Jill Hill, to be replaced in April by June Claman) tumble along with real urgency.

The production falls prey to cliche in its deployment of the chorus: First we hear a solo line, followed by a line read by two actors, then by the entire chorus. Dean’s a smart and straightforward actor, though not fully up to the fantastically difficult later scenes--those after the self-mutilation of the king. He relies on falsetto shrieks and strangulated cries to evoke a blasted soul.

Visually, however, Manke finds simple, clean ways to keep the production focused. The entrance of the now-blinded king works wonderfully. Bloodied from head to foot, Dean staggers on stage, backed by a pair of bright lights (on loan from a Richard Foreman show?) aimed straight at the audience. By his own hand, Oedipus has become his own blood sacrifice.

Such moments make this “Oedipus” something more than a Great, Forbidding Play of the Ages. And something more specific than a Freudian complex.

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* “Oedipus the King,” A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale. March 21 at 2 and 7 p.m.; March 24-26 at 8 p.m.; April 14-15 at 8 p.m.; April 23 at 8 p.m.; April 24 at 2 p.m.; May 2 at 2 and 7 p.m.; May 5 at 8 p.m.; May 8 at 2 and 8 p.m. $24-$28. (818) 546-1924. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Robertson Dean: Oedipus

Lorna Raver: Jocasta

Rod Menzies: Creon

Jill Hill: Teiresias

Written by Sophocles, translated by Kenneth Cavander. Directed by Art Manke. Set by Michael C. Smith. Costumes by Angela Balogh Calin. Lighting by Beverley Thies. Music by Norman L. Berman. Stage manager Louie Hopkins.