A world-famous novelist, sensitive, even beautiful physical production and acting at the highest level -- what else is needed to make the Playhouse's premiere of "A Moon to Dance By" as satisfying an artistic experience as it is a theatrical event?

A worthy script, that's what, and playwright Thom Thomas has obliged with compelling characters and dialogue, adding up to a humorous, layered exploration of the connections between personality and creativity. My only hesitation is a bit of repetition in Act 2, but even that may be necessary to give organic truth to the moving metamorphosis on stage.

The famous novelist is D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), who has been dead nine years when the play takes place over a few days in July 1939, at his scruffy "ranch" in Taos, N.M. The characters are his widow, Frieda (Emma Maria Frieda Johanna Freiin von Richthofen, later Weekley, later Lawrence, now Ravagli); her new husband, Angelo; and her long-estranged son, Monty Weekley.

Certainly the play gains interest from the ghost of the great novelist, who was once thought a pornographer (I remember well-thumbed copies of "Lady Chatterley" in my youth) but has been long enshrined as a great modernist. But Thomas' play is only tangentially about him -- otherwise, it might just be a worthy PBS docudrama or, worse, an earnest A&E biodoc.

Instead, the central conflict in "Moon" is embodied in the 39-year-old Monty, an Englishman who has grown up with his mind poisoned against the mother who abandoned him for what he condemns as lust. The dominating character is Frieda, partly because she is played by the award-winning Jane Alexander and partly because she represents all the frank, earth-mother sexuality with which Monty has to come to terms. She has her own demons to face. But it is Monty's psychological crisis that the play most movingly dramatizes, and it does so as the best theater must, in the theatrical present.

I don't know how much of this is biographical fact and how much is Thomas' speculation or invention, but in a program essay he speaks of the research he did (and you can hear him talk about it in a Post-Gazette podcast interview at post-gazette.com/theater). What matters on stage is that it's believably grounded in character, and it works dramatically.

It wouldn't if the characters weren't so vivid, because there is little enough incident, just the gradual revelation of motives and the impact of each on each other, set in the suggestive proximity of (in various ways) the glow of Lawrence's genius, the Indians of Taos, the 4th of July fireworks lighting the sky and the Armageddon of World War II just ahead. (Audiences should also know that the language can be explicit.)

Alexander is a great surprise as Frieda. My memories of her on stage go back 40 years to "The Great White Hope," and it is thrilling to see her embrace this complex character, mixing explicit carnality with maternal regret, not to mention a spot-on German accent.

Playing Angelo is a Pittsburgh favorite, Robert Cuccioli, best known nationally as the Broadway star of "Jekyll & Hyde" and here from performances for the CLO. He gets all Angelo's mercurial comedy but avoids clicha', revealing a feeling heart beneath the bluster.

Gareth Saxe, who is lesser-known but has significant experience, also manages to skirt caricature in playing the uptight Englishman. What might just be funny, in an Alan Ayckbourn way, turns out to be unexpectedly moving, also in an Ayckbourn way.

The nuanced direction is by award-winning veteran Edwin Sherin (Broadway, regional theater, TV's "Law and Order"), who lets the play breathe, as it must.

Steffi Mayer-Staley's set seems simple, but it exploits a towering tree, moon, mausoleum and starscape to vivid effect, assisted by appropriate costumes (Hope Hanafin), delicate lighting (Andrew David Ostrowski) and sound (Steve Shapiro) and atmospheric but never over-insistent original music by Simon Cummings.

The whole play will remind some of O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten," and not just because of the title. The echo is doubtless intentional, given the similarities: three characters, a struggle between society and libido and a long-night of the soul. You have to admire Thomas' chutzpah. Pittsburgh might also note the parallels to August Wilson's "Radio Golf," especially in the final moments.

Thirty years ago, long before he settled out west, Thomas ran the Playhouse company. This return counts as a world premiere, since it was an earlier version that was staged in Indiana. Now its future is up to the notorious vagaries of what is so laughingly called show business, emphasis on business, but which is really a craft of intuition and risk, no more a rational business than, say, banking or high-level finance.

But long-term, "Moon" seems a good bet: A smart, touching, well-written, three-character, one-set play offering juicy roles, it's going to be as appealing to regional theater producers as to actors and audiences. And we can say we saw it first.