What if you could recover a robust, full-bodied but long-lost play by one of our major playwrights?

Lee Kim From left, Scott Van De Mark (Don Quixote), Jeffrey Simpson (Kilroy), David Crawford (Casanova), Naomi Grodin (Gypsy) and Art Terry (Gutman) in "Camino Real." Click photo for larger image. 'Camino Real' Where: Open Stage Theatre, 2835 Smallman St., Strip District. When: Through Nov. 5; Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets: $25 (discounts); 412-394-3353 or www.proartstickets.org. Related story Ruth Willis celebrates 15 years with Open Stage

Right now at Open Stage, you can. They don't get more major than Tennessee Williams, and although "Camino Real," written and re-written in 1946-53, right amid "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Summer and Smoke," "The Rose Tattoo" and "Orpheus Descending," has never exactly been lost, have you ever seen it staged?

I haven't. But I've known its reputation as a difficult, neglected masterpiece, and I salute Open Stage Theatre for taking on all its windy, romantic, tortured, sprawling complexity. How big? The original Broadway production (which ran all of two months) used 30 actors in 55 roles plus ensemble scenes; at Open Stage, there are 19 actors playing 30 roles, plus ensemble.

Aside from having the requisite chutzpah, Open Stage also has a brave traffic-cop director, Mark Calla, and an appropriately flexible space, in which designer Amy Maceyko and crew have created a scruffy plaza surrounded by hotel, dive, gypsy's den, loan office, etc., at the center of an archetypal dusty seaside town, reminiscent of Casablanca, Vera Cruz or New Orleans.

Running the town for unseen corrupt bosses is Gutman, the Sydney Greenstreet role (here played by the strong, saturnine Art Terry). Primary among the fugitives who pass through or hole up in this lost world are mythic figures Jacques Casanova (mellow-voiced David Crawford), Marguerite Gautier (wistful Eric Highberg) and Kilroy, a young American (an intense Jeffrey Simpson).

The locals include a blind seer (Jaime Slavinsky), a gypsy direct from Noo Yawk with a son and quasi-virginal daughter (Naomi Grodin, Doug Bell and Molly Seremet) and two street cleaners -- the local guise of the grim reaper. Off in the corner sleeps Don Quixote (Scott Van De Mark), who may be dreaming this whole thing. We also meet Lord Byron and the pilot of a plane that offers erratic escape.

And so on. Characters and story are a melange of legend, poetry, protest and pratfall, cynicism and sentiment. It's carnival time, of course. But while the eternal roadway of life ("camino") was once royal, it may now be merely real, depending on how you view it. Byron has a brilliant speech of idealistic regret, and the gypsy's daughter has a summarizing elegy for all the con men, lovers, poets and losers that is pure, florid Tennessee Williams.

Will Kilroy escape this dead-end of scapegoating decadence with his Golden Gloves and American optimism? Maybe. At the very end, the plaza's fountain flows again.

This messy, grand fantasy is just about impossible to stage, and Open Stage's resources are limited. More actors who can speak poetry without self-consciousness would be welcome. But this strange play is there to encounter, if only to lead us back to the text or our own dreams.