Bob Brown

HALLOWEEN week is the perfect season for this theatrical chestnut about witches[msu: but halloween is over now: ]. The most familiar incarnation of John Van Druten’s 1950 play is the 1958 movie, starring Jimmy Stewart in the romantic lead as Shep Henderson, opposite Kim Novak as a modern New York witch, Gil Holroyd. At age 50, Stewart was well past his prime for such roles, and he knew it. After all, Novak was exactly half his age, although she had played opposite him that same year in Hitchcock’s murder mystery Vertigo.

   There’s no such age disparity between the romantic leads in the current production directed by Virginia Barrie at the Heritage Center in Morrisville, Pa. In this boy-meets-witch story, Shep (John Bergeron) is the young upstairs neighbor of Gil (Allison DeKorte), his bewitching landlady. Their meet-cute is about Shep’s problem, or rather problems: A bothersome neighbor, Gil’s Aunt Queenie (Cheryl Doyle), is creating a nuisance. Strange noises and smells emanate from her rooms, and somehow she seems to have entered his own locked apartment while he was away.

   It happens that Queenie is a witch, too, but a more mischievous one than her niece. To compound matters, Gil’s brother, Nicky (Patrick Albanesius), is an artist-cum-warlock, who also has an impish proclivity when it comes to the supernatural. While Gil would like a relationship with Shep to evolve naturally (or as naturally as a witch might allow), Queenie is hastening the process with a few more tricks up her sleeve, aided by Nicky. The main stumbling block is Shep’s imminent marriage to a woman who, unbeknownst to Shep, was once Gil’s archrival in college.

   Gil would like to reel Shep in by introducing him to the famous Sidney Redlitch (Joe Doyle), an eccentric author who is writing the definitive book on witchcraft. She knows that Shep covets a contract with Sidney for his publishing house. When Shep and Redlitch meet, the die is cast and the manuscript is speeded along with Nicky’s expert assistance — all unwittingly. The witches have not revealed themselves, but Shep is under a spell that puts him madly and instantly in love with Gil, a condition that threatens to deflate as he discovers the trickery.

   This is an old-fashioned romantic comedy that somehow still works because its premises are so classic and simple. References to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are dropped in, appropriately. The delirium that love induces is fodder enough, magic or no. Actors DeKorte, Bergeron and Albanesius are all familiar faces on local stages and acquit themselves well in their respective roles.

   For over a dozen years, the Doyles, founding members of Actors’ NET, have been creating theater as a labor of love — writing, directing and acting on their stage at the Heritage Center. And with both of them treading the boards in this production, it shows. Cheryl Doyle is a giggly delight as Queenie. You can imagine she might actually be able to cast a spell, and in a way she does. Joe Doyle plays the frumpy, unshaven, dipsomaniacal Redlitch broadly and humorously. You can’t blame him for going a bit over the top. Obviously, the two are having the time of their lives with these roles, which almost seem made for them.

   The smallest Doyle, Max the cat, is the animal “familiar,” Pyewacket (the name of a real 17th-century familiar, by the way), who nearly steals the show. He takes to the stage with all the aplomb of a veteran, unfazed by the lights or the crowd. And he never muffs a line. (I think he has at least one — offstage).

   This is a talky play that takes its time ambling toward a conclusion. As pure entertainment, it doesn’t offer much intellectual meat, but as a warmly funny offering on a cool autumn evening, it has its own satisfactions.

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  Bell, Book and Candle continues at the Heritage Center, 635 North Delmorr Ave. (Route 32), Morrisville, Pa., through Nov. 15. Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $20, $17 seniors, $10 children under 13. 215-295-3694; www.actorsnetbucks.org