ANN ARBOR, Mich.–“The life so short, the craft so hard to learn,” wrote Geoffrey Chaucer. He was talking about the art of wooing, but his words may apply to anything worth doing well (I have them on my guitar case), and that would include theater.

Which brings us to Anne Levy’s sprightly, open-air staging of The Canterbury Tales for the Penny Seats Theatre Company in Ann Arbor’s West Park. True to the original (but in today’s English), Canterbury Tales finds a group of travelers telling stories to ease the boredom of a long journey, and we get a sense of who each traveler is before the storytelling begins.

A half-dozen of Chaucer’s better stories are told: morality tales and, even better, immorality tales, and the actors perform them with laudable energy, especially considering their heavy costumes and the unrelenting sunshine of the longest days of the year.

The adaptation is by Lindsay Price, a Canadian playwright so prolific that an alphabetical listing of her plays provides 16 titles before you get to Canterbury Tales. Although there is a certain imbalance to her script—the Miller’s Tale is given too much time, the Pardoner’s Tale not enough—she captures Chaucer’s spirit and, with the director’s help, offers everyone in the cast a chance to shine.

Take Jenna Hinton, who plays the Cook, too timid to tell her tale. Hinton also gets to play, with relish, several frisky and robust women in other tellers’ stories. Or Brian Baylor, who plays the often intoxicated Pardoner (with a Cockney accent), and the conceited rooster Chanticleer, in the Prioress’ Tale. As the latter, Baylor gets to sing a bit of medieval hey-nonny-nonny and display his own fine voice.

(True Chaucerians, please hold the emails.) In the original Canterbury Tales, someone else tells the jolly, Aesop-like story of Chanticleer, and the Prioress tells a vile, anti-Semitic tale. There’ll be none of that here.

Others in the ensemble–Matt Cameron (the Miller), Dale Dobson (the Franklin), Debbie Secord (the Wife of Bath), Jeff Stringer (the Reeve), and Jennifer Sulkowski (the Hostess, who proposes the storytelling) all play their main characters and their other parts with verve, and a variety of accents, including French, Scottish and New York.

Actors engage with the audience, but not excessively. They engage with each other exceedingly well and that’s to their credit and to director Levy’s. For instance, when the Reeve (Stringer) talks about livestock and mentions “Swine,” he looks directly at the Miller (Cameron).

Bottom Line: To paraphrase that other English poet, it all adds up to a pleasant midsummer night’s diversion.

[The Penny Seats performs in West Park, which can can be easily accessed on S. Seventh Street between Miller Road and Huron. There is a tiered level of the park to sit on that faces the players, but the best suggestion is to bring lawn chairs or blanket. Concessions (water and a snack) are available, but bringing your own is advisable.]

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