The story of Edgar Cayce is a puzzle that no one has ever definitively solved. Certainly not the central element of the puzzle: Was he for real? And that question only adds to the conundrum, because it divides the issue in two. Did Cayce really believe in his psychic abilities, in which case at least he wasn't a huckster, and did his professed abilities have any merit, a question for which there is abundant contradictory evidence?

Someday, Johnny Depp will probably play Edgar Cayce in a movie, but for a theatrical introduction to the subject as unconventional as the subject itself, look no further than The Ballad of Edgar Cayce now having its world premiere under the aegis of the Construction Crew Theatre. Billed as a "bluegrass operetta," it might be more properly described as a phantasmagoria that invents its own theatrical conventions while communicating a significant amount of the Cayce story.

There are songs in Cayce, both traditional ballads and new compositions by playwright-director Gary Aylesworth, which use Cayce's rural Kentucky background for its bluegrass conceit. The production also suggests the simplicity of traveling shows that set up in small towns in the early 1900s, and that found theatrical magic by mesmerizing audiences with flourishes, distractions, and hypnotic hocus pocus rather than any expensive effects.

In fact, it was a traveling stage hypnotist known as Hart the Laugh King who, by helping cure Cayce of chronic laryngitis during a performance, led the apprentice photographer to his eventual career rooted in diagnosing and prescribing cures for ailing clients while himself under a trance. The encounter between Cayce and the Laugh King is depicted in the play, but as with just about every other scene, it is a stylized rendering, in this case set to the rhythms of a metronome, that might best be described as peculiar.

Writer-director Aylesworth portrays the enigmatic Cayce, as well as a variety of other characters of both genders, while a skillfully versatile Peter Newton, who has appeared in many of Aylesworth's works, also creates multiple characterizations including Hollywood pioneer Jesse Lasky, who has a running conversation with Cayce devotee Gloria Swanson (played by Aylesworth with a Norma Desmond weirdness). She wants to make a film based on Cayce's theories of Atlantis and the poison known as white sugar that somehow ends up with everyone in Machu Picchu, as the brusque Lasky struggles to find a commercial angle in the obviously unfilmable story.

In less than 90 minutes, Aylesworth manages to touch on many of the key moments in Cayce's life, including his misbegotten attempts to sell his services for commercial gain and the fulfillment of a dream to open a hospital where he could offer his healing techniques. Despite both the fame and derision that followed Cayce to his death in 1945, Aylesworth portrays him as a conflicted country boy on a noble mission. He blazed his own strange trail, and The Ballad of Edgar Cayce is right there beside him.

The Ballad of Edgar Cayce will run at A Traveling Jewish Theatre through Aug. 30. Tickets are $15 & $20. Call 831-1943 or go to www.constructioncrewtheater.com.