PROVIDENCE - I hate writing rave reviews. True gushing can undermine a critic's credibility. It can chip away at the carefully honed image of being objective, fair, honest, balanced and deliciously nasty upon occasion, especially when theaters charge the bluehairs outrageous amounts of money for junk and drivel.

But I can't help it. I've just seen "The Fantasticks" at Trinity Repertory Company. It's very name is an understatement. Fantastic, yes, but wondrous, timeless and truly magical also. This version, a marked improvement on the 42-year-running original I saw in New York, could run for another 42 years.

There are really two shows in one here:

The main saga is the simple, innocent, warm story of boy meets girl. How they fall into impossible young love under the sway of their comic, meddlesome fathers and a dashing bandit, in glistening moonlight, then stray from each other, becoming cynical in the harshness of the real world only to rediscover themselves older and wiser, if less pure.

The second is an unexpected performance of magic and illusion - people appearing out of nowhere, vanishing in boxes, balls becoming feathers becoming live birds, sleight of hand, sleight of heart, swordplay and sword swallowers - a marvelous device as subtext, symbolic of substance versus form, reality swimming around and against illusion. The array of tricks are performed by the perfect Mute Nate Dendy and Joe Wilson Jr.'s magnificent narrator/bandit El Gallo. But the real magician is director Amanda Dehnert who returns to Trinity - after leaving last year to join the faculty of Northwestern University in Chicago - in the full flower of her form to stage something that the originators, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, should bow to.

Broadway producers are currently mounting a new version of "The Fantasticks" in New York. The original 1960 show closed in 2002, after 17,162 performances, making it the world's longest running musical. Why bother? Just move Dehnert's improved version 200 miles west.

The production begins in Tony Award-winning set designer Eugene Lee's dilapidated Rocky Point, it's unplugged electric signs missing a few bulbs, its former glory stagnant and bare, a fascinating paean to what was good once.

The magic show begins with Dendy and Wilson through Tim Robertson's driving, pulsing piano overture. When Wilson's rich baritone sets the nostalgia with the classic ballad "Try To Remember," the journey to something simpler takes us along.

Luisa is 16 but actress Rachael Warren pulls off the role even though she is in her 30s. Luisa is in love with 19-year-old Matt (played by boyish-looking Stephen Thorne, also in his 30s). Their fathers - Hucklebee (Fred Sullivan Jr.) and Bellomy (Stephen Berenson) - want them to marry. So what do the parents do? They build a wall (Dendy and Wilson again in a myriad of permutations) to keep the couple apart and pretend to be enemies, knowing their kids will do the opposite of what they want.

They are right. Separated, Luisa and Matt fall helplessly into romantic love, their backs pressed against the wall in breathless whispers (and more than a few shouts). To seal the deal, the fathers hire El Gallo (Wilson) to abduct Luisa in order to have Matt save her, ending their feud and cementing the union.

Warren's Luisa is nearly flawless, brimming with youth, optimism and the joyful angst of unbridled feeling. Her soaring soprano is right on pitch, no mean feat given the intricate cadences and intonations of the Schmidt score where it is very easy for a mezzo to go painfully sharp.

Thorne's sincerity is so unvarnished, you believe he truly loves her. Thorne is an actor who can sing as opposed to a singer who can act. So what his tenor vocals lack in power or range he more than makes up for in tone and feeling.

Sullivan and Berenson - with their great disparity in size, temperament and delivery - are delightfully juxtaposed as the comic twosome whose meddling almost ruins their children's happiness. Even greater comic relief comes in the outrageous forms of the two men El Gallo hires to carry out the "abduction" - Brian McEleney's Henry, a dotty, ancient, memory-challenged, wandering minstrel/actor, and his assistant Mortimer (Mauro Hantman) whose lone specialty for 40 years has been dying in outrageous ways on stage. (If you don't laugh at the ax in his cheek, you are more dead than he).

The biggest rave goes to Wilson, whose El Gallo is so mesmerizing, so intense, you can't take your eyes off him. And his singing could make the new cast album a hit. I mean, how can you miss with tunes like "Try To Remember," "Much More," "Soon, It's Gonna Rain," "I Can See It," and "They Were You?"

However, the greatest feat is Dehnert's background staging and subtext. While most directors - in the shadow of these ballads, coupled with the suggested staging of merely two platforms and a ladder - have their actors simply sit and sing, Dehnert binds them up in cloth, spins them, spears them, skewers them, and makes them dance until they yearn to rest.

In the garish light of the noonday sun of Act II, when lunar romance has been shattered by stark reality, Dehnert shows us a dozen ways to be taken, beaten and wounded; how the lights of a dirty former carnival blind and glare, even as they eventually illuminate.

Trinity Repertory Co. has just extended "The Fantasticks" through May 6. Tickets are available by calling 401-351-4242 or online at www.trinityrep.com.