The Renaissance Faire -- a way for people to time travel with the DeLorean -- has long been the domain of the outcast. It allows you to enter a fantasy world where women still wear bodices and men carry swords. It offers up such amusements as skits about lusty washerwomen and creaky, wooden, old-timey rides.  And it often attracts a certain type of employee, the type who will spend the entire summer speaking in an old English dialect, sleep outdoors, and commit to wearing some pretty uncomfortable clothes in the oppressive heat. “The Faire,” a comedic play by New York-based actor and playwright Crystal Finn, goes behind the scenes of a deteriorating Renaissance Faire and shows us the drama that unfolds between six of its employees.

Some archetypes become apparent. There are the old timers -- those who have worked at the Faire for so long they can’t even remember the name of the person they banged on the swing that one time. That would be Olivier (Grant R Krause), an older, drunk cross-dresser, and Ursula (Amanda Sykes), a laid back, Wiccan churro seller. Two of the most realistic and likeable characters, they tell it like it is and don’t make any apologies for being lifers. The uptight, over-zealous virgin is Tilly (Jenny Seastone Stern), so eager to please Jeff the director (who doesn’t actually appear on stage but is still vital to the narrative) and prove her own virginity that she doesn’t even recognize how obsessive she is. Then there is Drake (Kelsey Kurz), the perpetually horny, swashbuckling goof who seems only to want to swordfight and have sex, yet when the situation calls for it, steps up as a real leader. Finally, we have the beautiful but jaded and self-absorbed Angela (Rachel Christopher), who desperately wants to be taken seriously as an actress. After she becomes disgusted with the cheesy dialogue Jeff has come up with, her misguided attempt to make up her own lines brings on one of the more humorous scenes in which the others struggle to work with her ad lib.

“The Faire” alternates between the stage, where the fake smiles come out as the performers try to lure more attendees after they learn of the Faire’s dwindling numbers, and the backstage area, where the characters show their true colors. This is where the real drama happens: crushes are revealed, dreams are built up and dashed, sexual revelations ensue, and the raunchy nature of the Faire and its participants is on full display.

Director Aaron Rossini masterfully extracts some really naturalistic, multifaceted performances from his cast, despite their archetypical tendencies. The dialogue is sharp, funny, and refreshingly true to life, as the characters often talk over one another and go through fairly believable awakenings. You will dislike some characters one moment, like them the next, and then dislike them again. Whatever they are, these people are passionate, and they will go down with the Renaissance Faire if they have to. They may be outcasts, but at least they have each other.