The new play at Kumu Kahua shares a generic relationship with all stories about people outside the glass looking in at lives that exclude them.

In content, it is a dramatic cousin to John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," in which itinerant farm workers are buoyed up by their fantasies and passions.

But "The Romance Of Magno Rubio," a 2002 off-Broadway play by Lonnie Carter based on a short story by Carlos Bulosan, is distinctly different. Its title character is a lovesick Filipino laborer and its style makes remarkable use of rhythm and cadence to turn his emotional aberration much larger than life.

Magno Rubio, played with understanding and warmth by Troy Apostol, is innocently charming and single-minded in his love for Clarabelle.

Never mind that it's the 1930s and racial distinctions are sharp. Never mind that he's only 4 1/2 feet tall and "brown as a coconut," while she's a blond white woman who tops out at 6 feet and 195 pounds.

Most importantly — although he's been sending her letters and money for years — never mind that he found her picture in a lonely hearts magazine and has never met her.

Magno Rubio is deliriously in love and, while the other men make fun of him, that love gives him an enhanced quality that they recognize. While not much of traditional plot happens in the play — 90 minutes without intermission based on an original story only a few pages long — it is very successful in creating a state of mind.

Director Kati Kuroda borrows her opening scene inspiration from the percussive theater piece "Stomp," using the hard bristles of a sweeping broom, tapping bamboo sticks, and metal lids to create a mini-overture. This sets us up for the rhyming choruses that form the backbone of the play.

It's a risky leap for a playwright to use ancient Greek and Elizabethan techniques to elevate a contemporary, low-life setting. But Kuroda and an excellently rehearsed ensemble cast (Apostol, backed up by M.J. Gonzalvo, Wayland Quintero, Lito Capina and Cheyne Gallarde) make it work.

The men deftly slip from prose to verse, they dance, the brawl in slow motion, and they sing in a Filipino dialect, with English subtitles crudely printed on brown cardboard for immediate understanding. Even without translation, the lines have an effectively dramatic, rhythmic effect. Late in the play, when Clarabelle does finally appear, she's played by one of the men (Gallarde). who steps out of the chorus to take the part and reinforce the presentational nature of the production in a way that no female actress could.

Set designer Elizabeth Harwood places the action in the men's rustic bunkhouse — a former chicken coop still surrounded by rows of heavy wire.

In spite of its depressed setting, the story of Magno Rubio is every bit a romance and a satisfying piece of theater to boot.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has reviewed theater performances in Hawai'i since 1973.