Inis Nua Theatre Company presents Alan Harris's 'Love, Lies and Taxidermy'

But Harris's play addresses some serious issues, such as immigration and economic struggles. It’s also stylistically ambitious, which director Tom Reing handles with skill.

That's so U.K.

I've long marveled at the way playwrights from the United Kingdom use narration and direct address to the audience. Both third-person he and she and first-person I mix with more realistic dialogue. Harris, like many playwrights Inis Nua has introduced to us, does it well.

In the first moments of Love, Lies and Taxidermy, actors Francesca Piccioni, Joseph Teti, and Seth Reichgott narrate the action. Teenager Valentyn (Teti) suggests that stranger Ashley (Piccioni), shaken up after an upsetting incident, drink some milk. They suddenly flash back to Val's childhood and Piccioni becomes his mother Vicky, forcing milk on the child Val. They then snap back to the present.

Sometimes characters even call out, "Flashback!" I love it. The style propels the action: this 90-minute play, performed with audience on four sides of a square, zooms along. The cast maintain their multiple characters and accents, and keep their narrative points of view clear.

Love and money

Val and Ashley meet outside a medical research lab, hoping to make a little money as test subjects. Subplots abound. Val's father Jacub, a Polish immigrant, is obsessed with taxidermy and sees it as his key to acceptance: "All you need to be British is a hobby." But Vicky is close to leaving Jacub for good. Val hopes to gift his separated parents a cruise to rekindle their passion, just as Ashley wants to help her father by saving his failing ice-cream-truck business.

Christopher Haig's set design offsets that tile square on the floor with impressive animals and birds on both pedestals and the cozy studio theater's walls. Four large black boxes function as hiding places for props and all the rest of the play’s furniture (including a bathtub), but aesthetically, they add nothing. Zachary McKenna's delicate underscoring with piano and guitar reminds us that the couple’s romance is most important.

Love, Lies and Taxidermy is charmingly old-fashioned, with quirky characters and a fun, heartwarming finale. Piccioni and Teti excel as teenagers discovering first love (when they speak of being in "college," that's the equivalent of our last two years of high school, so they're under 18 and live at home).

Reichgott gives an exemplary performance. He has his own climactic moment when he plays three roles in one scene: Jacub, Ashley's father, and Vicky's Tesco-manager boyfriend.

Okay, Inis Nua, go back to the heavy stuff — but thanks for breaking up a dreary winter with this jolt of warm jollity.