It wasn’t long ago, after seeing the actress in a few romantic comedies at Gilbert’s Hale Centre Theatre, that I gushed in newsprint something to the effect of “I could watch Tamra Mathias fall in love over and over again.”

Add to that the following, please: I could watch her play oddball, too, ad infinitum.

Mathias, as the compulsive liar and attention freak Fairy May, is one of the bright spots in the Hale’s latest staging, John Patrick’s seriocomedy “The Curious Savage.” Written some 55 years ago, it’s the story of a wealthy widow whose attempts at giving away millions to strangers results in her greedy stepchildren having her committed. There in the loony bin she meets Fairy May and a whole cast of wacky, mentally imbalanced folks who show her — like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and, to some extent, “Hamlet” and “Man of La Mancha” — there’s a measure of sanity (and heart) in insanity.

Directed by Valley theater critic Mark Turvin, this “Curious Savage” doesn’t quite avoid the playwright’s often awkward balance of humor and drama. The first act is low on laughs, and the second act, while rip-snortingly rollicking under Turvin’s hand, nevertheless wobbles under the poignancy it attempts to proffer. “Cuckoo’s Nest” does it better.

But the Hale’s “Curious Savage” is held aloft by a fine cast of Valley talents, including Jacqueline Gaston sporting a dyed perm as blue as Marge Simpson’s to play sharp-witted Ethel Savage, the moneyed matriarch for whom widowhood is an opportunity to break loose and try wild new things. Of her hair, she says the blue “goes with everything.”

The awkward balance of lightheartedness and drama in Patrick’s script inhibits his characters and keeps them from reaching farcical extremes. Turvin wisely doesn’t allow any of the performers — even Alaina Beauloye, who’s found a niche playing two-faced Cruellas in Hale shows — from going off their characters’ deep ends for easy yuks. (Though he does allow respected actor Charles Sohn, playing the psychiatric institution’s overseeing doctor, to overindulge in a second-act speech, overdelivering it like it’s his audition monologue.)

Much of “Curious Savage’s” playful spirit is channeled into Mathias’ Fairy May, a dervish in red plastic cat’s-eye glasses and an ever-changing array of wigs, a needy girl who’s prone to say things like “Climbing on stools is women’s work. Men have mountains,” apropos of nothing.

The same dimpled grin that stole my heart in Mathias’ earlier romantic comedies takes on a different tone in “The Curious Savage,” a crazy, feisty Cheshire-cat thing that’s half Winona Ryder, half Emily Strange and altogether engaging.

If it sometimes feels like Turvin has focused on character development over keeping the play moving at a briskly funny pace, Mathias serves as a bubbly counteragent, and every scene in which she gets to play around lifts the audience into a little whirlwind of free-spirited fun.

The widow Savage was willing to throw millions of dollars away to create that kind of happiness. Mathias creates it for the price of a ticket.