The XXIII International Hispanic Theatre Festival, built this year around a tribute to Spain, draws to a close this weekend with a disquieting, starkly beautiful production from the company run by festival founder Mario Ernesto Sánchez.

La Celestina, written in 1499 by Spanish novelist Fernando de Rojas, has always worn the label ''tragicomedy'' as its subtitle. Playwright Raquel Carrió's sleek new adaption for Teatro Avante is, more accurately, a comedy that ends in sudden tragedy. As directed by Lilliam Vega, the play alludes to its classic source with a formally staged prologue and epilogue, in between weaving a bawdy tale that grows increasingly intense.

Carrió has slimmed Rojas' story to five characters: the love-crazed nobleman Calixto (Jorge Luis Alvarez) and his crafty servant Sempronio (Julio Rodríguez); Calixto's virginal beloved Melibea (Geraldine Townson) and Sempronio's lusty lover Elicia (Jacqueline Briceño); and the manipulative old woman at the center of it all, Celestina (Gerardo Riverón). That Celestina, a former prostitute who comments on her loss of youth and beauty, is played by a man makes the character more amusing and more disturbing.

PERFORMED IN SPANISH

The contrasts in the piece -- between nobility and the lower class, between virtue and lust -- bring richness and complexity to the 75-minute script. La Celestina is performed in a poetically evocative Spanish; Calixto, for example, explains how completely besotted he is by the young woman he has encountered just once by saying, ''Melibea soy, Melibea amo, y en Melibea creo (Melibea I am, Melibea I love, and in Melibea I believe),'' so that his words become an incantation.

Not to worry, however, if your first language is English and you're less than bilingual. Floating above the black space where La Celestina is performed is a small rectangular screen with projected English supertitles that allow you to follow the story. Just one bit of advice, though: Sit toward the back of the theater, so you can glance at those supertitles and watch the play without bobbing your head up and down.

CAST STANDOUTS

The cast, dressed in gorgeous period costumes by Jorge Noa and Pedro Balmaceda, delivers a collection of detailed, stylish, involving performances. Townson and Alvarez play characters who are, by design, less open and interesting than the lower-class folks. Rodríguez is a masterful comedian, as is Riverón, who also makes Celestina ever so creepy.

The vivacious Briceño, who also threads some lovely singing through her performance, is most memorable of all as she turns Elicia into a woman completely at home in her body and her world.

This year's festival has brought many treasures from the Spanish-speaking theater world to South Florida. But one of the most impressive, as it turns out, was created right here in Miami.

Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.

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