To her knack for finding the unexpected but right physical setting for each play Quantum stages, artistic director Karla Boos adds, in "the Red Shoes," a magic hand with the temporal setting, as well.

	Mary Mervis Carolina Loyals-Garcia, left, Alexi Morrissey, Andy Place, Jennifer Tober and Erika Cuenca in Quantum Theatre's "The Red Shoes." Click photo for larger image. 'The Red Shoes' Where: Quantum Theatre at Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church, 416 W. North Ave., North Side. When: Through March 4; Wed.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun. 7 p.m. Tickets: $24-$27; 412-697-2929.

After all, what could be a better antidote to this deep freeze of the year than a snappy, brief musical parable about letting go of frigid inhibitions and liberating the emotional dancer within?

That's not really the story originally told by Hans Christian Andersen or the famous 1948 Michael Powell movie. There, the shoes are an obsessive, enticing, even demonic force. You should never limit Andersen's enigmatic fables to simple lectures of morality, but "Red Shoes" does come down on the side of stolid Danish prudence.

But that wouldn't suit Boos' vision of what we need to warm our February blood -- or to liberate our inner dancer, no matter when. In her hands, "The Red Shoes" turns into the artsy equivalent of "Footloose," with dance dislodging prudery, repression, hypocrisy, penny-pinching, boring clothes and all the other deadly virtues.

Boos' re-interpretation of Andersen's parable obviously owes a lot to her chief co-conspirator, flamenco dancer and earthy free spirit, Carolina Loyola-Garcia.

The two have jointly created this theatrical short story, along with music based on traditional flamenco, arranged and played by John Marcinizyn and Lucas Savage. Boos directs, while Loyola-Garcia choreographs and plays the role of ... the shoes.

How else to say it? Loyola-Garcia plays a passionate spirit of carnival who bubbles up in rebuke to the dour gray of young Karen's prim community. She is supremely at home with herself, just like the shocking red dancer's shoes fit for royalty that entice Karen from the cobbler's shelf. She embodies those shoes, bringing them to life.

But she is also, more simply, the outsider -- in this case, a gypsy Spaniard adrift in an alien land. Her flamenco has an insistent purity. In a way, the analogy is less to "Footloose" than "Babette's Feast," in which the alien art connects with an internal spirit.

The play's setting, which is always Quantum's pivotal counterpoint to the text, is the small 19th-century Unitarian Universalist Church on the North Side's Mexican War Streets. As a church, it is just right, since the community into which orphan Karen comes with her dreams of transgression is self-satisfied and conventional. So as the celebrants in their gray smocks prepare to start the service, their complacent ritual is interrupted by the hidden dancer.

But as Unitarian Universalist, the church is less appropriate, because UU's (as we call ourselves; I am one) are progressives who would welcome this "Red Shoes." So Quantum can play off the pious architecture and gray stone only by caricaturing the congregation.

Caricature, they do. An ensemble of three (Andy Place, Alexi Morissey and Jennifer Tober) play the old woman who takes Karen in, the narrator who tells her story, the old soldier who detects the shoes' curse and whatever other roles prove necessary. They do so broadly: This is the world of the Brothers Grimm.

Playing Karen is the luminous Erika Cuenca, mixing startled bewilderment and eager innocence. Amid the comic posturing of the ensemble, she seems real. It's easy to understand her as the artistic child who doesn't fit -- like Tommy Tune growing up in Oklahoma, say, or Billy Porter in Homewood.

I don't understand the time given to the goofy churchfolk at the very beginning, causing the play to take a relatively long time to get going. Eventually, though, the Spanish-spouting Andalusian breaks out of the closet and invades, along with her two musicians, launching the delayed story.

That story has the mix of parody and dark implications that you find in a Garrison Keillor story of the sensitive child trapped in an uncomprehending Midwestern town. What is flamenco if not a sort of emphatic blues?

There doesn't seem to be any set, just the platform of the church itself, but of course it has been artfully built up by designer Tony Ferrieri to accommodate the story while still seeming natural. Real church and enhancements both feature wood, which provides a satisfyingly reverberant sound for the staccato flamenco rhythm.

For all the largeness of spirit of Karen and her red-clad mentor, this "Red Shoes" is a small play, simple in outline and barely an hour long. But it casts a long shadow on these sunless days.