Laddy Sartin’s Catfish Moon, a charming down-home Southern comedy making its Triangle premiere at Raleigh Little Theatre, hooked the Sunday-matinee audience almost immediately, with its heady blend of rustic comedy and romance -- and one of the funniest love Triangles ever.

The show is set on a sloping, rickety lakefront dock (cleverly constructed by RLT scenic and lighting designer Rick Young, with a nice panoramic view of the deep woods that surrounds this isolated spot). Located just off one of those “blue highways” that snake through rural North Carolina, the deteriorating fishing pier has a number rotten planks, but the local yokels still use it for fishing, picnicking, a boat dock, and the occasional low-rent rendezvous. Guys with their Christian names embroidered on the pockets of their work shirts -- and the good old girls who love them, despite everything -- tie up their boats at this pier.

Costume designer Sue Brace expertly dresses the show’s colorful characters in work clothes, play clothes, and Sunday-go-to-meeting finery like the blue-collar working men and woman that they are; and Rick Young skillfully manipulates his lighting instruments to emulate the changing light of afternoon, dusk, nighttime, and sunrise in the deep woods.

Tony Hefner is hilarious as Gordon, a bashful roly-poly beau who seeks dating advice from the Horoscope Hotline; and Staci Sabarsky is terrific as Betty, the recently divorced wife of one of Gordon’s best friends. Hefner and Sabarsky are the epitome of a good old boy and good old girl in love, fumbling, bumbling, and stumbling toward intimacy; but the skunk at their little romantic garden party out at the lake is Frog (Ryan Stevens), Betty’s irate ex-husband who just cannot believe that his best friend is courting his former bride.

Stevens is delightful as Betty’s pugnacious ex who will never, never, never let her go; but David Wilk is a bit too nonchalant, too prosaic in the pivotal role of Curley, devoted brother to Betty, bosom buddy to Frog and Gordon, and a local wheeler-dealer who is trying to get the bickering Gordon and Frog to call a truce long enough for the three men to come together to buy their favorite fishing pier from a recent widower who is willing to make them a real deal on the property.

RLT guest director Rod Rich, who regularly turns quaint comedies into laff riots for Actors Comedy Lab, gets gritty performances from this game quartet of actors. Catfish Moon is not as complicated or as clever as the off-the-wall comedies that Rich usually whips into comic soufflés, but Laddy Sartin’s script touches the audience’s heart as well as its funny-bone and is thoroughly entertaining to boot.

Raleigh Little Theatre presents Catfish Moon Wednesday-Saturday, April 13-16 and 20-23, at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, April 17 and 24, at 3 p.m. on RLT’s Cantey V. Sutton Main Stage, 301 Pogue St., Raleigh, North Carolina. $14 Wednesday, $18 Thursday/Sunday, and $20 Friday-Saturday, except $12 Sunday for students and seniors. 919/821-3111 or click here. Note 1: All shows are wheelchair accessible, and assistive listening devices are available for all shows. Note 2: The April 24th performance will be American Sign Language interpreted by Sam Parker and JoAnne Miller-Kinsey. Raleigh Little Theatre: http://www.raleighlittletheatre.org/catfish.htm.

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