DANVILLE - Young lovers overcome their parents' disap-proval to join together forever. This theme, best known from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" but dating back to the Greek classics, gets a modern and musical twist in "The Fantasticks."

Danville Light Opera will present "The Fantasticks" this weekend. The show, one of the longest running and most often performed musicals in history, will be DLO's dinner theater event for the current season.

Kayla Verhoeven and Brent Jones, as the star-crossed lov-ers Luisa and Matt, each debut in a leading role in this version of the show. Brad Smith as El Gallo and David Laker as Henry both appeared in other productions of "The Fantas-ticks" in years past.

Bringing such varied talent and experience together has been the job and the pleasure of director Matt Hester.

"'The Fantasticks' was the very first show that I di-rected," Hester said. "It feels like my firstborn."

That version was in 1997 for a community theater in Crawfordsville, Ind. Hester now directs the Myers Dinner Theatre in Hillsboro, Ind., and has appeared in many Danville productions including the title role in DLO's "Jesus Christ Superstar" last season.

Hester said, "This is a won-derful cast performing in a show that everyone can relate to. The experience of being young and falling in love is universal. Holding hands, looking into one another's eyes, the first kiss, are memories we all have."

"So is feeling rebellion against your parents," Hester continued. "In this story, the parents intentionally place obstacles in their children's paths. They use reverse psy-chology to get their children to do what the parents believe is the right thing."

Verhoeven, a junior at Westville High School, ap-pears in a musical for the first time as the young Luisa. She has performed for seven years with Westville's concert choirs and currently sings with the schools female group, The Singing Tigers.

"This has been a great op-portunity and a lot of fun," the teenager said. "My character is very enthusiastic about every-thing, really dramatic about life. She goes from happy to sad quickly."

At first, according to Ver-hoeven, the love scenes were difficult. "It's hard to say you love someone when you don't," she said.

The 20 year-old Jones felt a similar concern with his role. "It was weird to walk in and act like I was in love," he said.

Jones' background includes choir since fourth grade and three years in show choir at Danville High School. He also sang in the head quartet for the school's Madrigal Dinner. "Show choir was my focus in high school," Jones said.

Now a student at Danville Area Community College, Jones last appeared onstage in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat" at the Fischer Theater in Dan-ville.

David Laker first appeared in "The Fantasticks" more than 25 years ago in a theater in Kentucky. Cast as Henry in DLO's production of "The Fantasticks," Laker describes his role as "an overripe ham, a Shakespearean actor who provides comic relief to the plot."

"This show puts a mirror up to the audience," Laker said. "It's a lovely allegory with an obvious lesson that is learned throughout the performance. This show acknowledges the growth that we all go through as human beings."

Brad Smith reprises his role as El Gallo, the musical's nar-rator, after more than 20 years away from the stage. The late Jerry Orbach originated the part when the musical debuted off-Broadway in 1960. Al-though Smith appeared as El Gallo years ago, he said that he understands the role far better now.

"There's a quote from He-mingway about life breaking us all," Smith said. "He said that sometimes we're stronger in the broken places. This show speaks to that life ex-perience. Children learn that life isn't perfect."

The show's director agreed. Hester said, "Nothing is perfect in life. We all have our hard-ships."

The lyrical score of "The Fantasticks," co-directed by musical directors Kathleen Spain-Swiersz and Pamela Starr, includes such well-known songs as "Try to Re-member" and "Soon It's Gonna Rain."

Hester said, "The charac-ters' feelings are so strong that the words can't just be spoken. This music goes straight to the heart."

Creighton Cole, Jim Gil-more, Jeff Carter and Sidnee Gordon also appear in the show, which was produced by Nancy Henderson.

Danville Light Opera will present "The Fantasticks" at 6:30 p.m. Friday and Satur-day and at 12:30 p.m. Sun-day at Danville Area Commu-nity College's Bremer Center. Tickets for the dinner theater show, catered by What's Cooking?, are $26 for adults and $22 for ages 18 and under.

Reservations can be made by calling 431-1660 or at Danville Light Opera's Center Stage Box Office in the Vil-lage Mall. Box-office hours are from 7-9 p.m. through Wednesday.