There's a few more performances left to catch the remount of Lee Cataluna's "Half Dozen Long Stem" at Kumu Kahua. The show was a success in the 2004 season and plays with a warm, familiar flavor in the current outing.

Set in a Honolulu flower shop in danger of closing, its handful of employees never complete a flower arrangement, and their only visible customer never makes a purchase. But they fill up a full two hours of dialogue with a thorough dissection of each other's lives.

Mrs. Fujiuchi (Charlotte Dias) and Roslyn (Karen Hironaga) are both widows of the same man and have inherited equal shares in the business. The first Mrs. Fujiuchi has become jaded and crusty from working the shop — seeing through the last-minute purchases that masquerade as romance. The second Mrs. Fujiuchi is a woozy tippler with skewed plans for adding a wine bar and balloons to the shop's merchandise.

Two employees, weepy Nornette (Danel Verdugo) and flamboyant Romell (Norman Mu–oz) invent an imaginary fiance for Nornette in a ruse to keep the place open long enough to supply flowers for the wedding. Ron Encarnacion is a delivery man shamming a bad back to keep out of work and Aito Steele is a brash customer with a shy yen for Nornette.

Much of the show's charm is tangential to the main action.

Characters go in and out through an imaginary front door, vocalizing a bell that tinkles in tune to their emotional states. A radio station plays love songs and commercials and dedications that are tiny comic gems.

Directed by R. Kevin Doyle, the show brings back the original cast, who seem to have settled comfortably into their roles. The characters seem fuller and the action more cohesive, and some of the sharp edges have been eliminated.

Dias' character is still crusty, but we're quicker now to believe that it's only her defense mechanism shielding her emotional side. Hironaga's Roslyn is less of a threat, and a scene in which she's locked inside the walk-in cooler, fogging the glass with her breath, is even funnier.

Verdugo and Mu–oz are a fine balance of timid naivete and flaming bravado. And Steele seems to show his character's feelings for Nornette more quickly and more genuinely.

The show draws its title from the proposition that sending large amounts of flowers is a cover-up for undesirable motives, while sending just half a dozen shows sincerity.

The show plays with a "Cheers" cohesiveness, where the emphasis is on the staff. While there may be customers out there somewhere, they're not really necessary to the plot.