This weekend No Refund Theatre (NRT) hopes to strum audiences' heartstrings and tickle their sides with its second show of the season, The Goodbye Girl.

Neil Simon's romantic comedy, The Goodbye Girl, is a story about a young, out-of-work single mother whose New York apartment gets leased to an actor from Chicago.

Feeling sorry for her, he continues to let her live in the apartment along with her daughter. The show takes the audience through the couple's episodes of butting heads that ultimately lead to a budding romance.

"It's your typical sappy, romantic comedy, but it's important to have something light-hearted," said Jason Cassidy, director of the show. "It's a bittersweet ending and shows you it's not all puppies and rainbows but you take what you can get."

Alicia Dipompeo (sophomore-secondary education), a cast member who plays Donna, said the show may be a bit cheesy, but that it's a great story.

"I love [the show]. It's a cute, warm love story," she said. "It's a girl meets boy, girl puts up fence and boy breaks down fence story. It's a bit cheesy but, all in all, I love it."

Katie Stratico (sophomore-marketing and Spanish) said her favorite part of the show is the script.

"I have a love-hate relationship with Neil Simon. Some of his word choices, to today's audiences, sound cheesy. But some are very witty. You have to overlook it. So the script would be my favorite part," Stratico said.

Stratico said in this Simon play, there are lots of lines, which poses a difficult hurdle to leap for her.

"I usually don't have trouble learning lines, but this show has lots of lines. And then getting the timing down is hard. You have to say the lines quickly, comedic timing," Stratico said.

Former Penn State student and State College resident Micah Winarchick, who plays the main character Elliot, also said the comedic timing was the hardest part of the show.

"Simon is a great writer of a different era. It is slightly dated but extremely funny if you get it. You have to be in that mindset or it will go over your head," Winarchick said.

"You can't deliver it if you don't get it. We have to work on finding the timing and to not be too over the top," he added.

For Cassidy, he said his job hasn't been so difficult.

"Directing for this show has been pretty easy. There were a couple times I wanted to wring the necks of the cast but it's easy to get mad at the cast and the cast to get mad at the director," Cassidy said. "Nevertheless, every show you cast somebody who is perfect for that role, they just get it and we got a few in this show."

NRT is trying something new for this production. Cassidy said the cast pre-recorded a number of songs to play along during the show.

"We discovered that the cast is musically talented. All the music that you will hear during the show is cover songs that the cast performed. The cast found these songs inspired the show," Cassidy said.

Cassidy said he grew up watching the movie because it was his mother's favorite.

When approaching the adaptation to the stage, he said he faced many "holes" in the plot.

"I've had to have seen the movie at least 100 times," Cassidy said. "But as I got older, I realized there were giant holes in the plot. But in the end the message was still the same. So I had to overlook that."