"The Time of Your Life," Pacific Resident Theatre, Venice, CA

Produced to honor William Saroyan’s Centennial, the playwright’s The Time of Your Life, directed by Matt McKenzie for the Pacific Resident Theatre, offers a splendid secular version of The Canterbury Tales.

Here a cavalcade of demimonde pilgrims seek not salvation at the altar of Nick the Bartender (Christopher Shaw) but a haven in which to connect, irrespective of gender, station, or ethnicity, with the rest of their ilk.

McKenzie presents the lovely though gossamer resiliency of the human spirit. The story resonates today. A timely message? Oh God yes! One that we forget and need plays like this of which to remind us again and again and again.

The story takes place one afternoon and evening in a saloon on the San Francisco waterfront in 1939. The date is significant: a few weeks earlier Germany had invaded Poland and the world was about to go to hell.

Nick is the saloon’s fixer, high priest, and male equivalent of Miss Lonelyheart. To all who enter he offers unconditional, non-judgmental, Mother Teresa hope.

McKenzie makes grand use of the trove of resources – an unparalleled script, actors, visuals and audios - at his disposal. At heart Saroyan’s script is a panoramic love story. The echo of love lost or never articulated, the flicker of love burgeoning, of individuals, of the world at large. This love is not pretty or neat. Is it ever?

McKenzie strobes on the story’s wealth of character and the gritty texture of its humanity.

The drama simmers: no major surprises, no cataclysmic denouements, no out-of-the-blue resolutions. Just a constant cross section flow of humanity that barrels through the saloon’s swinging door. Bums, philosophers, do-gooders, do-badders. In short, Everyman and -woman.

He paces the story with a sure hand (Bad guy, black-garbed Blick of the Vice Squad – aka William Lithgow, doesn’t push the action until near the end), the better to let Nick and Good Samaritan Joe (Robb Derringer) from their corner of the world solve the world's problems one at a time.

The ensemble’s chemistry is magnificent. You immediately connect with the characters; and you feel the connection between them.

Individually and cohesively the performances glow.

Shaw’s Nick? A prince of a gentleman, level-headed, kind to his Mother (Sarah Zinsser) though indignant at the injustice of the world. He’s the anchor on this waterfront asylum.

Derringer’s Joe? Generous and Rabelaisian but just below his surface you sense an unacknowledged hurt, something that’s happened to explain his uber-generosity.

McTighe’s Tom? Bursting at the seams to do the right thing, namely, helping Shiva Rose’s Kitty Duval, frail but porcelain beautiful working girl, love and be loved in return.

See this for its excellent performances, its great set, and the way it conspires to make a big, sprawling, messy world (Saroyan’s, ours) seem a little bit smaller, a little more humane. One that is kinder and gentler in both name and deed.

Performances are 8pm, Thursday – Saturday, 3pm, Sunday. the show runs until June 1. Tickets are $20-25. The Theatre is located at 703 Venice Boulevard, Venice. For more information call (310) 822-8392 or visit www.pacificresidenttheatre.com.