CMU From left, Dusty Alvarado as Uriah, Paul Lindquist as Jesse, Jeffrey Omura as Polly in "Man Is Man." Click photo for larger image.

Here's a treat. In the interest, I assume, of multiplying opportunities for students and audience both, CMU has diversified its usual season of big mainstage shows, each running a couple of weeks, offering instead a whole smorgasbord of productions big and small, most running for one week or less. And in the case of Kathleen Amshoff's "Man Is Man," they've gone even further -- or allowed her to go further -- by loosing the usual institutional bonds to let her take her show off-campus.

She's found a fabulous site in the Sage Building at 1029 Fifth Ave., a couple of blocks over from Mellon Arena. I guess that's Uptown, hard by what used to be the Lower Hill. Amshoff's performing space is a former shoe store, a long narrow room with the cabinets that held its shelving intact, as well as those tall ladders on tracks. The result looks like cubicles with balconies above -- a kind of jungle gym where the actors can make believe.

And make believe they do. Although the program doesn't say so, this is very much Amshoff's adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's 1926 play. She names her actors Her Majesty's Imperial Army Theatre Corp. and frames the play as a recruiting exercise to convince us, the feckless audience, that we might as well enlist in the interest of adventure, security and a chance to bash people about for god and country.

	CMU Galy Gay meets the firing squad. Click photo for larger image.

This very neatly blurs the time in which the play is set, which of course Brecht himself did with great glee. "Her Majesty" makes it sound like the present or recent past, even though I don't think the Queen has actually had an Indian empire for some decades.

Come enlist,
Sign the paper, get my jist?
Don't just sit there like a fairy,
Enroll in the military,
Tell your conscience he's dismissed.

But I suppose the point is that imperial attitudes transcend the limitations of fact and era:

Instead of bottom scraping,
You could be out native raping.
It's more fun when they exist.
Your superiors won't be pissed,
In fact they'll all be video taping.

And maybe it's not just the Brits that we're talking about here:

We will put you on the track,
One way passage to Iraq.
Especially if you're black,
Come enlist.

Yes, I know, the British are part of the coalition of the willing, but Brecht and Amshoff obviously have a more general target in view. She also carries the sardonic joke (better than John Kerry's) into the program with a very clever recruiting spiel.

	CMU Galy Gay, right, faces the three scoundrels. Click photo for larger image.

The story, such as it is, takes a smiling young man named Galy Gay (named before that came to sound as it does today) and entangles him with some rascally soldiers who are caught looting a native temple and need to convince their victim that he's really their companion, Jip, to fool their commander, the fearsome Sergeant Bloody 5.

There's also a Widow Begbick -- sort of a music hall variant on Brecht's Mother Courage -- and assorted native Indians and other soldiers. The action is farcical, all in the interest of Brecht's parable of the ease with which man kills man and the various sordid motives that masquerade as patriotism, heroism and the other isms of any particular country or clime.

There are three songs (I wish there were more), with music not by Kurt Weill but Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond, with a trio playing accompaniment. At its most farcical and inventive, it's a lot of fun, using the environment well. Occasionally the actors slip into a self-consciousness that feels like camp, which strikes me as wrong, lessening Brecht's force. Some of the machinations drag on a bit. At more than 1 3/4 hours without intermission, it feels a bit long.

But it's a tonic, nonetheless. Kudos especially to the larger-than-life Jarid Faubel (Sergeant/Wang) and to the purposefully smaller Sean Hamrin (Galy Gay).

It's a small house and tickets are free, so good luck getting in. Call (412) 268-2407 for reservations or just show up and hope. Remaining shows are Nov. 11-12, 8 p.m.