Finding humor in an identity crisis

In the annals of hocus-pocus, few spells can match the one in Carlo Gozzi’s “The King Stag.” If you utter the play’s magical words over a corpse, your spirit enters the dead body while your original body dies.

Don’t try this trick at home.

At A Noise Within, the spell leads not only to passing thoughts about what identity is all about but also to a satisfying aura of mystical merriment.

Joseph Graves’ brisk and handsome staging isn’t entirely fresh. Today, Gozzi’s 1762 commedia classic is best known for a mid-’80s production by American Repertory Theatre that played Los Angeles in 1986 and returned in 2001 with a brief run at UCLA. Staged by Andrei Serban, it’s probably remembered most for its Julie Taymor (“The Lion King”) designs.

Graves and his designers didn’t have similarly scaled resources, but they went for a similar look: half Asian, half European fantasy. The results are striking, especially Alex Jaeger’s extravagantly ornate costumes and Joyce Ann Littrell’s wigs and hair design.

The choreographed capering of the puppet stags and other animals and the martial-arts- inflected fight scenes are gracefully staged and artfully lighted on Trefoni Michael Rizzi’s intriguingly enigmatic set.

Although the actors are vividly made up, however, they don’t wear half-size masks as their predecessors in the Serban staging did.

So the look of the actors is somewhat less formal, slightly more realistic.

Graves uses the same translation and adaptation, by Albert Bermel and Ted Emery, that Serban used, but Graves eliminated the character of a wizened old man who represented one additional swap of bodies and spirits.

In Graves’ version, the soul of the good king Deramo (Stephen Rockwell) enters the body of his long-trusted but secretly wicked prime minister Tartaglia (William Dennis Hunt) instead of the old man -- who appears to have been included in the original to facilitate a scene in which Tartaglia was beheaded, which left his body ineligible for further use by other people’s spirits.

The Graves version makes the plot a little less complicated and better emphasizes the polarities of the judicious king and his miscreant minister.

Rockwell and Hunt successfully alter their demeanors to play both men’s spirits with the proper gusto.

Gusto is a necessity in this context. The performances are all broad without succumbing to unwarranted self-indulgence.

Jill Hill probably has the most fun, playing two very different young women, most memorably the bucktoothed, scatterbrained but socially fearless Smeraldina.

Her two characters are among those interviewed by the king as prospective queens. During the interviews, a magical statue laughs if the young women aren’t being candid. Maybe there’s an idea for a reality TV series here.

Abby Craden conveys a sense of regal rectitude as the rigorously honest winner of the competition.

*

‘The King Stag’

Where: A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale

When: April 27 and May 18, 2 and 7 p.m.; April 30, May 1-2, 16, 8 p.m.; May 3 and 17, 2 and 8 p.m.

Ends: May 18

Price: $28-$32

Contact: (818) 240-0910

Running Time: 1 hour, 55 minutes

Stephen Rockwell...Deramo

Abby Craden...Angela

William Dennis Hunt...Tartaglia

Apollo Dukakis...Pantalone

Mitchell Edmonds...Brighella

Jill Hill...Smeraldina/Clarice

Wesley Mann...Truffaldino

Christopher R.C. Bosen...Leandro

Eiji Inoue...Durandarte

Directed by Joseph Graves. Set by Trefoni Michael Rizzi. Costumes by Alex Jaeger. Lighting by Peter Gottlieb. Music by Norman L. Berman. Puppet master Richard A. Hardin. Wigs and hair by Joyce Ann Littrell. Stage manager Victoria Robinson