Try to remember a time when The Fantasticks wasn’t playing in New York, and you’ll have to go back nearly 45 years. This theatrical phenom, a “little musical” written by college buddies Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, has only eight cast members, a scripted minimalist set and three musicians (one doubling as an actor). It boasts no furry costumes, no actors on roller skates, no spectacular props or special effects.

But it speaks to the heart in a way that few modern musicals do, and that gave it an unheard-of, 42-year run off-Broadway, and worldwide productions in 13 languages.

Now the North Coast Repertory Theatre brings the show to Solana Beach in a production that may seem primitive to those who are used to the spectacle of a Cats or a Starlight Express (or to the astonishing sets routinely seen on the North Coast stage), but is so winning in attitude and cleverness that you won’t miss the glitz.

The story is simple – a sort of commedia dell’arte Romeo-and-Juliet tale without the sad ending. The songs are tuneful (is there an adult anywhere who hasn’t heard “Try To Remember?”), the lines both funny and touching. It’s about innocence and wisdom, romance and reality, love and hurt, pain and the growing that comes out of it. In a word, life.

Matt (Brian Maples) and 17-year-old Luisa (Jill Lewis) are next-door neighbors. Unbeknownst to them, their respective fathers (played by Chris Moad and Mark C. Petrich) want to marry them off. To accomplish this, they’ve built a wall between their properties so the kids will think they are feuding (reverse psychology always works best with children, as they sing in the hilarious song “Never Say No”).

The kids take the bait: Matt returns from college to discover love – and to announce with wonder that “there is this girl.” Luisa, the dreamy-eyed teenager, loves to “touch my eyelids,” because “They’re never quite the same,” and longs to “be the kind of girl designed to be kissed upon the eyes.”

The fathers decide Luisa’s fantasies can be accommodated with a rape – well, actually, an attempted abduction – so they hire El Gallo (Randall Dodge), a sort of Johnny Cash figure with a dramatic cape, to stage the event. El Gallo enlists two extras – Henry, an ancient Shakespearean actor in tattered Elizabethan dress (Tim West), and his sidekick Mortimer (David Radford), skinny and angular in his un-p.c. Indian garb. Mortimer, Henry notes, does death scenes – hilariously - at the drop of a cue.

The romance and moonlight of the first act changes in the second act which, like life, takes place by day, under the unforgiving glare of the sun, when suddenly “what at night seems oh, so scenic may be cynic in the light.” Both Luisa and Matt suddenly feel the call of other places, other people, other adventures, and Matt in fact leaves to experience the world.

There is hardly a simpler or more universal story, nor one told so appealingly, and the cast does it justice. Lewis has exactly the right look and the right voice for the vocally demanding part of Luisa. Maples’ voice doesn’t have the projection power of Lewis, but works fine in this space. Dodge looks and sounds great, but I wish he wouldn’t cut the ends of the lines quite so much on “Try To Remember.” Moad and Petrich are terrific as the fathers, but West and Radford nearly steal the show with their comedic antics.

It’s good to have The Fantasticks back in town. If you’ve never seen it, this is your chance. If you have, remind yourself why you liked it so much the first time around. And watch for “Try To Remember,” a new documentary about the making of the original off-Broadway production.