People often talk about the magic of the stage.

In 1950, playwright John Van Druten’s supernatural comedy Bell, Book, and Candle tried to make that magic literal, casting a spell on audiences with the tale of a New York publisher who falls for a sexy witch. Unfortunately, the play’s magic has faded over the years, due mainly to some somewhat racist, uncomfortably sexist material in the original script.

That’s the primary reason Van Druten’s comedy about love and magic is rarely performed these days.

But it’s hard to forget a hit, even one from sixty years ago, and Bell, Book and Candle, ripe for reinvention, is begging to re-enter the picture, with a number of recent productions popping up like rabbits from a magician’s hat.

Now playing at Spreckels Performing Arts Center, the show has undergone a bit of a shape-shift, thanks to director Thomas Chapman. Keeping the same central characters and story, he’s excised most of the offending language, and taken a swipe at updating the material, transplanting the tale from 1950s New York to the modern day.

There is a lot to like about this new production, but unfortunately, the updates are a little too little, and are often confusing, placing cell phones in the hands of characters who still, when forced to use an old-fashioned phone, end up calling the operator to ask to be connected. References to the Kinsey Sex report as a recent best-seller, and to the House Un-American Activities Committee, all stick out distractingly as leftovers from the 1950s, and simply call attention to the fact that the script is overlong - it was originally performed in three acts - over-written, and under-cooked.

What makes Bell, Book and Candle more than watchable is a strong cast and an energetic production that has amped up the magic effects, working on a magnificent set in the intimate Condiotti theater.

Gillian, played with gale-level enthusiasm by Liz Jahren, is an emotionally stormy but very powerful witch, who’s learned to use her powers more discreetly than her eccentric aunt Queenie, played by Mary Gannon Graham, with frothy, giddy delight, and Gillian’s morally flexible brother Nicky, played by Peter Warden, blending hammy over-the-topness with an edge of danger. To help capture the amorous attentions of her upstairs neighbor Shep Henderson - Larry Williams, bringing a nicely grounded energy to a relatively straight role - Gillian summons the witch-chasing anthropologist author Sidney Redlitch-Fong (a hysterical David Yen), whom Shep hopes to sign to a lucrative publication deal.

Spells are cast. Lights spin through the air. Invisible cats purr.

And the further Gillian falls for Shep, the more complicated her family relationships become, resulting in a series of semi-madcap shenanigans - and a great big choice for Gillian.

Though the thin, long, unwieldy script does cut into the fun, the cast has a blast turning it all into something magical - and magic, it turns out, in the right hands, can be seriously contagious.

"Bell, Book and Candle" runs Thursday–Sunday through October 12 at Spreckels Performing Arts Center. Spreckels online.com