Marcel Nunis' "Tale End" is one of the big hits of this year's Rogue Festival. Performances are selling out, and another show has been added to the schedule Saturday. Word-of-mouth is a strange and wondrous beast; I've heard many more people talk about going to "Tale End" because it's hard to get into than because it's a good piece of theater.

But commerce and art have always been linked, and kudos to Nunis for being so adept at getting bodies into the seats.

Which leaves us with "Tale End" the play, which is not the same as "Tale End" the phenomenon. There's no question this is a high-octane production with a couple of highly charged performances from its hard-working actors, Renee Newlove and Greg Taber. With a frenzied series of plot twists and enough emotional jacknifes to give whiplash to a soap opera, this cheeky and fast-moving one-act production leaves the audience breathless.

However -- and this is a pretty big however -- this loose take-off on "Snow White" promises more than it can deliver. It's a few dwarves short of a septet.

Nunis does manage to twist the fairy tale in amusing ways. Miss White is a conniving, shallow, entitled teen under the keen and watchful eye of her vengeful stepmother. On this night she's opted to go shopping after-hours at the local Target store. The "hunter" from the original tale has become the chief of security at the "Kingdom," which instead of a land far away is a rundown Las Vegas casino. He's there to protect her. Or is he? Headstrong and strong-spirited, the two characters square off in a constantly shifting battle of wills. iPods, cell phones, handguns, sex talk and hard-R language are prominently featured.

I must admit to being very much a non-Snow White expert, so I may have missed some of the script's clever fairy-tale allusions. But I couldn't escape the feeling that while Nunis was very good at twisting this tale, he didn't know when to stop. He couldn't stop twisting. Instead of gradually weaning the audience onto the joke, or even providing an "aha" moment when things start to fall into this place, the plot keeps tying up even tighter. Perhaps it's because the link to the original fairy tale is more tenuous than it first seems. Is this a riff on Snow White, or is it a present-day back-and-forth between a prissy teen and a security guard? If it's the former, it needs a stronger and more significant connection to the source material. If it's the latter, then, the fairy-tale stuff should go out the window completely.

Both actors get a workout, and I had mixed feelings about them as the play rolled on. Newlove has a natural intensity on stage, and her confidence and poise is striking. But when it comes to emotional transitions, she needs much firmer and more astute direction. Taber is strong and charismatic, but, again, his character veers wildly, and while he can certainly handle the script's rollercoaster moves, it starts looking like a lot of effort.

Don't get me wrong: In some ways, "Tale End" is a natural crowd-pleaser and very slick. But if this cast plans to go on the road to other fringe festivals, as Newlove announced from the stage afterward, it's not going to be able to rest on its comfortable cushion of Fresno goodwill. It will have to win over audiences not just with its premise but with its execution. This "Tale" has promise, but I hope this isn't the end result.