Don’t be put off that the Belfast Maskers company is presenting a play based on the complicated poetry of T.S. Eliot. You may remember from college English classes that Eliot was an American expatriate whose poems about the disillusionment of modern life after World War I were hard to read, harder to understand, and not the type of thing that made you feel particularly glad to be alive.

But the actors of the Belfast Maskers jump into Eliot’s poetry like troopers with a truly heroic plan of action, and they come up victorious with the highly dramatic and smartly stylized poetry-play Sweeney Among the Nightingales,” which will be presented through March 31.

Director Basil Burwell has deftly compiled these fragments of Eliot’s poetry in play form to reflect the philosophical questions Eliot glommed on to during his turbulent life. There is The Waste Land,” a momentous poem about the spiritual dryness of a lost generation. There is also The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” about social futility and inadequacy, and The Hollow Men,” about the loss of faith. And Burwell taps into several other Eliot pieces, too, in this fragmented collection.

The show opens with dim light and early jazz tunes as a cast of 25 characters processes on to stage and takes its place among Eliot’s pubs and riversides and deep desperation. Peter Stewart’s distressed set depicts London in the early 1930s — its back streets, posh parlors and whore houses. Marsha Coller’s flapper dresses, tweed jackets and soldier uniforms help set the mood, too.

“Let us go then, you and I,” the play’s Poet (acted with seriousness, friendliness, and reflection by Michael Fletcher) begins, and the world turns Eliot for two hours as this able community troupe shows lives measured out with coffee spoons and quests for roots that clutch.

Burwell poignantly captures the humor, cynicism, pain and rage of Eliot’s era through well-crafted scenes and top-notch ensemble performing. He has stepped into Eliot’s mind, torn lines from his poetry, and stepped back out with a performance piece that relies more on effect than on story telling.

The most laudable outcome is that there is no truly weak moment in the presentation. Even when performers miss a line and someone backstage prompts them, the spirit of the piece is not broken. So few companies could get away with such practices, but the Belfast Maskers has a rare form of theatrical sophistication that relies on honesty and sincerity over pretension.

To this end, each actor brings something unique to the stage whether it’s simply looking the part of the frightened masses or delivering a line that freezes the audience into full attention.

The most engaging scenes are group scenes — when Nancy Burwell, as a Cockney woman, tells stories in a pub with Bill Lannon, an old sailor, or when Elisabeth McClure, as a distinguished woman, talks of hyacinths and serving tea with the Poet, or when the Hollow Men (Tom Maycock, Nathan Block, Erik Hardin and Lucille Iverson dressed in black suits and white masks) lean together reciting that the world ends not with a bang but with a whimper.”

Depressing though it may sound, Sweeney Among the Nightingales” is entertaining and provocative. Literary types will be especially pleased to see” Eliot’s poetry in dramatic form, but this show by no means requires an English degree background. Even when the thoughts are terribly complex, the cast is generally successful in relaying the overall feel of the moment.

Burwell is kind enough to end the show on a hopeful enough note, invoking love as the eternal redemption. The final words — HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME” — may be the routine call of British bartenders to clear the pub at closing, but Burwell uses them to a new end at the close of this show. It’s a warning and a call to arms.

The Belfast Maskers will present Sweeney Among the Nightingales” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday through March 31 at the Railroad Theater in Belfast. For tickets, call 338-