If you're a Gordon Moore fan -- and if you've seen more than a few shows at the 2nd Space Theatre, you have to know he's one of Fresno's hardest working (and most droll) actors -- you're not going to want to miss his latest comic high point:

Getting stoned.

It's all acting, of course, and it's found in Neil Simon's "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers," the brisk and funny Good Company Players production that continues through Feb. 18 at the 2nd Space. (Though it opened Jan. 4, I missed the first two weekends of the run because I was on vacation, so I'm just now catching up.)

The moment of unlawful euphoria comes when Moore's character, a hapless 50-year-old chap named Barney Cashman who would dearly love to hitch a ride on the 1970s sexual-revolution bandwagon, is trying to seduce Bobbi (Casey Ballard), a mentally fluttered hippy chick.

They're together in his aging mother's doilly-laden vacant apartment (she's off doing volunteer work at the hospital), and he settles down on the couch next to her. Bobbi, who has enough screws loose to open a hardware store, produces the joint and urges him to try it, and while Barney doesn't mean to inhale, you know how that goes: Soon he's flying higher than a Pan Am jet. His face screws into a cautious wrinkle of worry and free-floating abandon; it's like watching the president of the home and school club toking up.

Very, very funny.

Readers familiar with my critical tastes know that I've beaten up quite a bit on poor Neil Simon over the years. (I think part of it is a certain weariness with how often his work is produced in Fresno, and with my feeling that his early work, at least, hasn't worn well.)

But "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers" didn't rub me the wrong way in the least. Though it's steeped in the wildly changing mores of the sexual revolution, the play doesn't seem dated or archaic.

Instead, it's a gentle romp through middle-aged insecurity. Barney, a 50-year-old fish-restaurant owner with an unfortunate habit of smelling his fingers, has never cheated on his wife. He just wants to do it once -- to add to his list of life experiences.

But it isn't that easy. In three scenes, he tries to seduce three different women. Along the way he discovers something about them -- and about himself, too.

The strong cast includes Ballard as the dippy marijuana provider, a delightful Mary Piona as a dreary melancholic and -- my favorite -- Michelle Bonanno as the mercurial Elaine, a moody woman picked up by Barney at his restaurant. Together, Bonanno and Moore glide through their Simon banter ("Have you ever tried sleeping with a vaporizer?" he asks, concerned about her cough, and she replies: "No, but don't worry. I'll get around to everyone") with a zip and an ease that keeps the comedy percolating.

Director Joyce Anabo, who as an actor knows a thing or 20 about making people laugh on stage, gives a nice, snug shape to the proceedings, and if the hard-working Moore (who's on stage the entire evening) has a fault, it's getting a little too wound up too often.

But to pick too much would mean I'm a cold fish. Most of this warm-hearted show is so hot it glows. Ticket information: www.gcplayers.com.

A print version of this review will appear in my theater commentary Friday in the Weekend section.