If the Mountaineers Players put on a musical in the woods but no one was around to see it, would the show still go on?

There’s a good chance the Kitsap Forest Theatre company — which has been producing plays of all shapes and sizes in an amphitheater nestled in the Seabeck forest since 1923 — won’t run into that predicament anytime soon. But the Players faced the possibility head on this summer by putting on a small (in numbers) production of the musical “The Fantasticks.”

The company usually doesn’t produce a summer show, sound man and Mountaineers veteran Mark Malnes said. Its spring productions are typically immense enough, with a cast ranging from 45-65 and audiences into the hundreds, at times filling up all of the dirt forest seats.

But this year, a small crew was interested in putting on a summertime show, so they grabbed the story of adolescent love, parental defiance and coming of age by lyricist Tom Jones and composer Harvey Schmidt and began presenting it in August.

While audience numbers have been minimal over the first three of the four-week production, Malnes said there have been quite a few Forest Theater first-timers discovering what the Mountaineers Players are all about.

I, myself, fell into that category. And I must say that if you’ve never been out to the Kitsap Forest Theatre, it’s worth an afternoon and $15 simply for the spectacle.

Upon entering the theater, patrons follow a dirt trail down the side of a ravine, criss-crossing maybe 100 yards or so before descending upon the amphitheater cascading to a dirt stage with a backdrop of great fir trees and cedar side panels. All the while you hear a stream running 50 yards backstage, need I say more?

There’s only one weekend left in run of “The Fantasticks,” and while it seems Schmidt and Jones may have missed the mark a bit with their 1960s allegory, the Mountaineers Players were right on the money.

Now, when I say Schmidt and Jones may have missed the mark, I may be largely alone as “The Fantasticks” is billed as “the longest-running musical in the world,” and “A timeless fable of love that manages to be nostalgic and universal at the same time.” The universal message and girl-next-doorness of the play were absolutely relatable, but it was the tenor of the sappy love songs that evoked a strong odor of cheese.

Still the eight-member Mountaineers cast sang them right on key along with the well-played keys of accompanist Will Gerhardt.

The story is simple — as the cocksure emcee-of-sorts/villain/comedian/antagonist of the show, El Gallo (that’s “El Gai-o”), announces following the show’s opening number. It’s about an all-grown-up college boy (Cooper Harris-Turner) and a sheltered, yearning 16-year-old girl (Linnea Svensson) — neighbors who fall in love. But, of course, they can’t be together because of their mean ol’ dads who have built a wall between their backyards and put on a nasty charade to keep the lovebirds apart.

The funny thing is, while the boy and the girl (Matt and Luisa) are secretly meeting for kisses over the backyard wall, their fathers are also secretly meeting, plotting an arranged marriage for their children. (Remember, I said a nasty “charade.”)

The fathers finally arrange to end the false feud between themselves by hiring an actor to stage a dramatic abduction of the girl allowing the boy to save the day, marry the girl and everyone will live happily ever after.

But, of course, it doesn’t work that way with marriage. Not even in show business.

Once the romance of secret meetings and daring, though staged, rescue is over, the couple is blind-sided by real life.

They get a lesson from the school of hard knocks — Reality: 101, you would do yourself well to take a lesson from the Kitsap Forest Theatre production of “The Fantasticks” — especially if you’ve got kids or parents who won’t allow you to be with your “one true love.”