Canadian playwright Stephen Massicotte tries, in a two-actor play, to re-create a World War I battlefield, a horseback ride across the Canadian prairie, and a desperate cavalry charge. As if that weren’t challenge enough, he combines realism, fantasy, flashbacks, dreams and fractured chronology in an uneasy mix. Telling us the play is a dream doesn’t quite solve the problems. Somewhere in Canada, farmer’s son Charlie (Brett Ryback), along with his horse, meets émigré English girl Mary (Ashley Bell) in a barn, where both take shelter from a storm. They fall madly in love, but her snobbish mother disapproves of him as “a dirty farm boy,” and soon they’re parted by the Great War. He feels an obligation to join the Canadian Cavalry, and she bitterly resents his leaving. Bell also doubles nimbly as a tough, heroic (male) sergeant. The horse is an abstract sculpture, like a modern-day Isamu Noguchi, which also serves as a troop ship, and the trenches at Ypres. It’s not clear whether it’s part of David Potts’ handsome set or a clever prop by MacAndME. Director David Rose has mounted a sensitive, inventive production, with expert lighting by Jeremy Pivnick and sound by Cricket Myers. Colony Theatre Company, 555 N. Third St., Burbank; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 & 7 p.m., through Nov. 23. Call theater for added perfs. (818) 558-7000, Ext. 15, or www.colonytheatre.org.

Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 & 7 p.m. Starts: Oct. 25. Continues through Nov. 23, 2008

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