If one really thinks about it, the stage seems an odd place for a story set in something as big as New York City. This is doubly true when you consider a relatively small venue in the relatively small Vancouver. Yet one could say this about love as well: how can such a little stage host something so big?

As Magenta is bringing such a production of Susan Sandler’s romantic comedy Crossing Delancey to Vancouver for Valentine’s Day, they’ve found that all you need to achieve such an undertaking is a little cultural understanding and a lot of heart.

“New York is more of a state of mind than a city,” said director Andrea Adams. “Because this show is more timeless, classic, old world, it doesn’t have to be as big and bold as the Empire State Building.”

A veteran of the theater, including 15 years of directing productions for the People’s Church on Mill Plain and Andresen, Adams is a self-proclaimed “hopeful, hopeless romantic.”

“I’ve directed one other community show, Neil Simon’s Proposals,” she said, “and it too was a romantic comedy. So we’re sensing a pattern!

“I love the movie [version of Crossing Delancey” that came out in the late ’80s,” she said. “It is old fashioned, pure, innocent romance, and that is what intrigues me. I’d love to bring that back into style.”

Set in the 1980s, when the play was originally staged, the story is about Izzy (Hadas Cassorla), an employee at a bookstore open to two romantic possibilities: an intellectual author (Dave Roberts) and a pickle shop owner (Matt Feldman). The former represents a romantic life Izzy could have away from her upbringing, the latter an embracing of the old and traditional. It’s all about making a choice between big and little, new and old.

“It’s all in the interpretations of the characters, as we have old world versus the modern way of thinking,” said Adams. “My overall theme was to focus on the community and family, romance and New York City.

“There are two different relationships going on as far as romance,” said Adams, “and I wanted to get the absolute contrast between ... her new-way-of-thinking bookstore and her bubbie’s [grandmother’s] lower east-side apartment and the park that goes with the apartment. So it’s a matter of finding all the different levels of ways of living.”

“She’s supposed to be in her early 30s,” said Cassorla of her character, “and her bubbie is trying to get her married off. But her perspective is, ‘That’s old school, I’m the ’80s woman, I’m a new woman.’ But I don’t think she really understands what that means. And I think that she’s kind of trying to beat this thing, but also does really want the happily ever after and the marriage. She’s not really sure what she wants or how to get what it is that she wants.”

Born in Israel to American-born Jewish parents, Cassorla is returning to the theater after a 12 year absence. She was an undergraduate at the Niagara University For Theater and, after joining the military, was stationed in Fort Lee, VA, where she acted in such productions as Anything Goes, Arsenic and Old Lace, and the lead in Cinderella.

“There are only two things that I’ve ever wanted to do in my life,” she said. “I wanted to be a lawyer and I wanted to be an actress. Now I’m both. This is the life!”

She’s currently doing improvisational comedy at ComedySportz in Portland. “One of my friends at ComedySportz is closely affiliated with Magenta and told me about the auditions the day before the auditions and I thought, I can play a New York Jewish girl.”

Cassorla is one of three Jewish actors playing in Crossing Delancey, and their heritage has proven to be invaluable to bringing authenticity to a play based in the Jewish part of New York.

“There are just some things that maybe someone who isn’t Jewish doesn’t know,” said Cassorla. “There’s a scene ... where the grandmother says, ‘It’s okay, you can touch me’ to one of the guys. It’s a religious thing: in orthodox Judaism, men are not supposed to touch women. So that’s one of the issues.”

“Those three have taught me a lot,” said Adams. “I didn’t have to go to the Jewish Historical Society, it came to me. I’ve heard stories and explanations and how to pronounce things and what things mean and why we say those things.

“I have those three people that have those natural instincts about them, about the undercurrent of the Jewish heritage and Jewish community. So that has been a blessing.”

“We have really been bonding,” said Roberts vis email of the cast, “and [there’s an] excellent chemistry between Izzy and her two love interests, Tyler and Sam.

“[It’s] a fun romantic comedy with top notch actors filling all roles.”

“I want people to walk away with that giddy, wonderful, warm and fuzzy feeling,” said Adams. “They want to go home and call their grandmother, they want to kiss whoever they’re with. It’s like walking out of a chick flick, but better.”

So how will Magenta bring something as big as love in New York to somewhere so small? The answer is that the timeless truths of an old-fashioned love story, as well as the spirit of New York, can reside in each of the actors and, particularly, in the hearts of the audience. And, really, there is no bigger venue.

Crossing Delancey opens February 12 and runs through February 20. For more information, visit www.magentatheater.com.

Adam Stewart is a cultural go-getter and arts writer for The Voice.