Mark Leialoha

Olive Kitteridge: Two stories from the novel by Elizabeth Strout. Directed by Joel Mullennix. Through Sept. 26. Word for Word, Theater Artaud, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. Two hours, 25 minutes. $25-$40. (800) 838-3006, www.zspace.org.

Many things nettle the prickly title character of “Olive Kitteridge” in the enticing Word for Word production that opened Saturday at Theater Artaud. Unwanted advice from her spoiled new daughter-in-law drives her up the wall, as do the random stupidities of others. And more.

Time and the “summer people” are changing the coastal Maine town where the retired junior high math teacher’s family has lived for 10 generations. Olive’s son doesn’t visit much, especially after his wife moves them to California. Olive’s favorite walking path is infested with in-line skaters. When her husband surprises her with a bouquet, you know Olive will find something wrong with every petal.

One of the surprising delights of the Word production that’s opened Z Space’s new season at Artaud is not just how much fun Word has with this difficult woman but how endearing she becomes. That’s a tribute to director Joel Mullennix and his cast, particularly Patricia Silver as Olive, but also to Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Word, which brings works of fiction to life onstage without changing a word, usually does better with short stories than chapters from novels, which can leave the viewer a little unfulfilled. That’s somewhat true with the two chapters used here, too. Word’s “Kitteridge” sends one out of the theater eager to read the whole thing. But each of Strout’s chapters is a self-contained, if interlocked story in its own right, and Mullennix’s seven-person ensemble embodies them with exciting creativity.

“Tulips,” the eighth of the 13 stories, interweaves the plight of the aging Olive and Henry (a pleasingly mild, pacifying Paul Finocchiaro) with that of the Larkins (Nancy Shelby and Warren David Keith). Olive and Henry are coping with retirement, their distant son (Patrick Alperone), Olive’s general annoyance, which Silver laces with sharp pangs of guilt and denial, and a severe illness. The Larkins, who “had seemed as pretty and fresh as blueberry pie,” now hide in their home with the blinds drawn. The reason for that is revealed with shock and hilarity when a squirming Silver meets Shelby’s tour de force of disarmingly flirty, mad spite.

There’s nothing to match the impact of that scene in “River,” the book’s final chapter, but it rounds out the evening beautifully. The tale of developing romance – between the 74-year-old widowed Olive and Keith’s reserved, cordial, widowed Jack Kennison – is as twisting, rocky and refreshing as a Maine river.

Mullennix applies a kind of Down East restraint to Word’s trademark inventiveness that works beautifully on David Szlaza’s spare, broad, thrust-stage set. He enhances the intimacy by spreading the action through and above the audience, enfolds the tale in Jim Cave’s sculptural lighting effects and peppers the narrative with sharp bursts of action (choreographed by Andrea Weber).

There are a few passages where the tension grows slack, but not for long. Silver completely embodies the funny, poignant prickliness of Olive. Brilliantly etched cameos by Jeri Lynn Cohen, Michelle Bellaver and the rest of the ensemble evoke the essence of Strout’s art. These are people we know, and their stories are ours.

E-mail Robert Hurwitt at rhurwitt@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle