A popular musical is made more palatable to today’s sensibilities.

The Fantasticks is the longest-running musical of all time; its original Off-Broadway production ran for 42 years. It’s also a theatrical work that contains parts that haven’t aged well.

It’s a Romeo and Juliet-like tale of Matt and Luisa, two teens whose respective fathers trick them into falling in love. But there are added ingredients of a Latino character named El Gallo who narrates and intervenes, dismissive racial and cultural depictions, and a jaunty song about a staged abduction that it refers to in the “classical literature” verbiage as rape – over and over again.

It’s otherwise a conventional tale of love lost and regained, and Victorian-era innocence versus worldly knowledge.

Its director, Justin Gordon, came up in local theater including Pacific Repertory Theater, studied theater in London and the University of Illinois, worked on stage and television, and is now on faculty at Monterey Peninsula College Theatre Co.

He says he intends to update and fix the issues as much as he can while retaining the parts that have made it a favorite among audiences. He’s cast a non-white actor as El Gallo, he’s changed depictions of Native Americans to pirates, and he says the show’s creators Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt updated the “rape” song as a “raid” song called “Abduction Ballet.”

“I’ve found that is hasn’t dampened the humor at all,” Gordon says. “Art is continually evolving and we as storytellers should adapt. These older plays written with sensibilities of [their] time, we owe it [to them] to push that forward.”

THE FANTASTICKS runs 7:30pm Thu-Sat, 2pm Sun, July 26-Aug. 12, at Monterey Peninsula College Morgan Stock Stage, 980 Fremont St., Monterey. $22-$25/adult; $20/adult advance, seniors; $15/military, young adult 13-21; $10/child 12 and under. 646-4213, mpctheatre.com