By Julie Stern

SHERMAN — Sherman Playhouse’s current production of Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not For Burning offers a chance to see a Medieval costume drama that mixes the pageantry of Shakespeare with the incisive wit of Shaw and the ironic sensibilities of post-World War II Europe.

The front room of Hebble Tyson, mayor of the small market town of Cool Clary, is the setting for this play. …Burning brings together a world-weary veteran of the Thirty Years War and a young woman accused of witchcraft, an offense for which she is doomed to be burned at the stake.

Embittered and disgusted by his war experiences, ex-soldier Thomas Mendip presents himself at the mayor’s house demanding to be executed, because, he says, he wants to confess to the murder of the local rag and bone man.

His efforts are forestalled, first by the arrival of Alizon Eliot, a virtuous young maiden from the local convent who has been promised in marriage to the mayor’s nephew Humphrey Devize, and then by the arraignment of Jennet Jourdemayne, whose late father was the village iconoclast and who is now herself accused of witchcraft for having turned the rag man into a dog.

This dramatic opening provides ready material for conflict and subplot. While the loutish Humphrey and his raucous brother Nicholas battle under the fond eyes of their doting mother over who gets possession of Alizon, the maid in question is casting her eyes toward the mayor’s shy young clerk, the orphan Richard.

Can the wit and intelligence of the fiery Jennet save her life, when it is these same qualities that have gotten her on the local village hate list? More importantly, can they rouse Mendip from his own despair and rekindle a new purpose for living? And what is the real story on the rag and bone man?

There is some fine acting here, particularly by Adam Battelstein, a former member of the dance troupe Pilobolus, who brings vitality and energy to the role of the reluctant hero, Mendip, and Sally Gundy as the bemused mother of Humphrey and Nicholas. The mayor’s widowed sister, the only purpose in life of the boys’ mother is to get those boys married, perhaps so she won’t have to deal with them anymore.

Bruce Tredwell and Alexander Z. Kostera were also fine as the Katzenjammer brothers, drinking themselves silly, fighting with one another, or trying to woo the timorous maiden.

Kelly Ferrar grew into the part of Jennet. She definitely looks the part but it took time for her to fully manifest the character of the strong and clever heroine. But we saw the play on opening night, and no doubt she will keep the force and confidence that she showed by the second act.

Jack Murphy is both spry and congested as the snuffling Mayor Tyson, and Steve Manzino is positively Machiavellian as the suave magistrate who has to decide the case.

Local regular Viv Berger, though not listed in the playbill, does a rollicking turn at the end.

Alpha Castro’s costumes are absolutely magnificent — worth seeing in themselves — and director Jane Farnol’s set design is impressive as well, evoking the Fourteenth Century with a cavernous stone fireplace in which can be seen the glowing coals of a perpetual fire, while an airy frame of windows looks out onto a peaceful garden.

As an unusual and ambitious project, The Lady’s Not For Burning is definitely a theatrical experience worth going to see, and a good one to take older children to.

The one thing that was not appreciated, on opening night, was the claque of friends and supporters of the players who kept responding to every line with exaggeratedly loud laughter. This was distracting and unnecessary. Such tracks are better left with television sitcoms, where you can reach for the remote.

(Sherman Players will continue to present The Lady’s Not For Burning on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8:30 pm and Sunday  afternoons at 3 pm, until May 6. Call the box office at 860/354-3622 for tickets, directions or other information.)