Actor Charles Timtim remembers sneaking a copy of Rap Reiplinger's "Poi Dog" album to pop into his father's phonograph — hey, this was pre-CD times; Timtim was attending Lincoln Elementary School.

"I had a little shame about the cover, never knowing if it was naughty, but I put on headphones and I laughed, laughed, laughed. That was my first recollection of Rap," said Timtim, now 36.

Starting tonight, Timtim — joined by two members of the Honolulu Theatre for Youth's acting ensemble — gets to mouth, mimic and magnify all that was Reiplinger in "Rap's Hawaii," HTY's adaptation of Reiplinger's original, groundbreaking comedy, in an unconventional production directed by Harry Wong III and adapted for the stage by Lee Cataluna.

"I was too young to see Rap live," said Timtim, a sometimes actor. "But he's my hero; basically, he formed my sense of humor, what I find funny now. All I can say is Rap's humor is timeless. We've been touring this show statewide for sixth-graders, and they catch on. And the humor plays to all different ages — 12th-graders find it as funny as younger kids."

Fellow actor Pomai Lopez, 25, the lone female aboard, recalls her parents playing Reiplinger's recordings, hearing his raps on radio en route to school and remembers his video, "Rap's Hawaii." She was too young to see or know Reiplinger, who died in 1984 after a career in the comedy troupe Booga Booga with James Grant Benton (also deceased) and Edward Ka'ahea or during his solo stint that made him an icon.

"I remember his 'not too sweet, not too rancid, but just right,' " Lopez said. "It was part of everyday lingo, even when I was growing up.

"When I first started work on the play, I didn't speak pidgin, but I could understand it," said Lopez, who attended Kapi'olani Community College and Windward Community College after graduating from Saint Francis School. "Some of Rap's stuff is pure pidgin genius."

Kimo Kaona, a Hanalei, Kaua'i, native who just turned 21, remembers Reiplinger's video while attending Kamehameha Schools. But the impact of "Russell, you get pen?" and "not too sweet, not too rancid" in pop culture here "made me feel like I knew it," he said of Reiplinger's quotability quotient.

Being the youngest of the acting trio, Kaona said, he was initially intimidated by his lack of Reiplinger savvy.

"There was a lot of pressure because I was the least familiar with his stuff," said Kaona. "If Rap was a college course, Charlie (Timtim) would have aced it. But I'm grateful I had a fresh take to the material. The pressure was to maintain the authenticity of Rap. So far, I'm happy the way it's turning out."

The idea for the production came from the top.

Eric Johnson, HTY artistic director since 2005, was told after arriving from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., that he had to get indoctrinated to local ways and lingo, and was told "Rap's Hawaii" was the primer.

"So many of our actors love the material; I realized how important it was culturally," said Johnson, who quickly became a fan. "Although Rap was best known as a performer, he was an extremely skilled writer and creator of material. We knew we had to keep his material alive. I always felt that humor can define a generation."

How to sew the silliness into a tapestry of outrageous fun was the ultimate challenge.

When Lee Cataluna, a playwright when she's not an Advertiser columnist, heard HTY was planning to stage Reiplinger's work, she wanted in.

"I asked — no, I begged — to be included," said Cataluna. "Anything! I'll bring coffee to rehearsals! I'll drive the actors to performances! I'll sweep the stage when pau! Just let me play, too! Like so many people, I loved Rap's work and just wanted to be near it again."

Cataluna took on the task of transcribing, off his recorded albums, each and every one of his available sketches for consideration in formulating a play that liberally re-creates the spirit of his original material. She was adamant about making each seeming ad lib a part of her script — for a reason — and gives all comedic credit to Reiplinger. Every single utterance is his doing.

"I've gotten very nervous when people have said, 'I hear you wrote a play about Rap Reiplinger for HTY.' No! I didn't write anything! What I did was carefully transcribe, word for word, his sketches from his albums and the 'Rap's Hawaii' DVD," Cataluna said.

"The material wasn't available in script form, so I wrote it down. I tried to be so fastidious — I even counted every 'No, no, no, no ... ' and 'Try wait, try wait, try wait OK try wait ... ' as best I could. I realized that many people know the material by heart and that if we got one word wrong, that would ruin the production for the Rap Reiplinger purists."

Timtim said that since the 1978 release on vinyl of "Poi Dog," some things have changed.

"The language is a little different now," he said. "There's a whole generation that doesn't speak that same brand of pidgin."

Cataluna agreed that isolated tone and phrases seem dated. "Kids don't say things like 'wop yo jaws' anymore," she said.

Still, the layers of Reiplinger's wit and invention live on for a new generation of admirers.

By day, Timtim works at Communications Pacific, an advertising and public-relations company, where he is a program coordinator. He said Reiplinger's humor helped him overcome his "cripplingly shy days in high school."

Said Timtim, "I was so shy, I couldn't have a conversation, especially with a girl. I made a transition from Lincoln Elementary to Kamehameha, and speech and drama helped me overcome (the shyness). In seventh grade, my voice cracked; I was in speech, then theater, then I aspired to become a standup comedian. For my career speech, I used Rap's 'Lolo Telethon.' And it stuck with me all those years."

Lopez, who did "Grease" at Saint Louis School, "A Chorus Line" at Castle High School, and "You Somebody" at Diamond Head Theatre before joining HTY's acting ensemble, is Fate Yanagi in the play.

She also assumes male and female roles, like a lava-lava dancer, the operator in "Room Service," an auntie in "Date-a-Tita," a tita in "Loving You and Surfing You." "It's really a challenge to do these different characters," she said.

Lopez particularly liked "Japanese Roll Call," a brief but hilarious roster of Japanese names. "He had a method in his madness," she said of Reiplinger's wit.

"Rap approaches comedy with such a generous spirit," said HTY's Johnson. "You can tell he is sending up people. But he also loved the people he's sending up. His humor, then, is laughing with, rather than laugh at, the differences of people."

Reach Wayne Harada at wharada@honoluluadvertiser.com.