Staff photo / Andy Gray
Amy Burd, left, and Thomas Burd are shown in a scene from the Neil Simon comedy “Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” which opens Friday for a three-weekend run at Trumbull New Theatre.

Directors don’t need a lot of people to turn out for auditions as long as they get the right people to turn out.

Robert Spain, who is directing Trumbull New Theatre’s production of the Neil Simon comedy “Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” said he couldn’t be happier with his cast.

Thomas Burd plays Barney Cashman, a married man who feels life is passing him by and decides to explore the “sexual revolution,” and Amy Burd plays the three different women with whom he tries to arrange trysts.

“Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” which ran for more than 700 performances on Broadway from 1969 to 1971 and spawned a 1972 film adaptation, has been staged before with only one woman playing all three roles, but it traditionally is done with three different women.

“I didn’t have a lot of people audition,” Spain said. “When Amy came in and I looked at her audition form, she said, ‘I would love to play all three parts.’ Well, I’ve worked with Amy on several different plays, and I think she’s one of the premier female actresses in the area, along with her ex-husband, Tom Burd, who I think is one of the better actors in the area. So when she said she wanted to play all three roles, I said, this is a match made in heaven. I’ve got two veteran actors that I know I don’t have to spoon-feed. It makes my job a lot easier, especially on a play like this.”

The casting requires Amy Burd to play three very different women.

“The first woman that comes in is a married woman, but very promiscuous,” Spain said. “She has a lot of affairs. She’s a smoker. She coughs and hacks, and he says, ‘Well, what does your husband think of it?’ She goes, ‘Well, I don’t care what my husband thinks. I do what I want to do.’

“In the second act, she’s this flighty actor you’ll think has a few screws loose. And then when you get to the third act, she’s this mousy housewife whose husband is cheating on her, and so she wants to try to get back at him, but she doesn’t know what to do in a situation like this.”

While Amy Burd has to create three different women, Tom Burd’s Barney has his own evolution.

In the first act, Barney has a very willing participant for his adulterous plans, but he is trying to create a more romantic experience, Spain said.

“By the second act, he brings cigarettes because the woman in the first act wanted a cigarette and he didn’t have any. So now he’s more prepared. And in the third act, he’s bringing champagne, and whistling. This is old hat to him now, and you’ll see the subtle changes in Tom … He kind of changed his role. He went from being the timid guy in the first act to being, ‘I’m used to this stuff now. I’m a worldly man.'”

Normally at TNT, directors submit shows for consideration that they want to direct, and a committee picks the season. In this case, someone suggested doing “Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” and Spain was approached to direct it.

“I said yes because I like Neil Simon,” Spain said. “I think he’s funny. He’s kind of a sage of his age.”

Sexual mores certainly have changed since Simon wrote the play, but Spain believes the underlying issues still are relevant today.

“I think it still works, especially with what’s been happening recently with liberalism against conservatism and things like that. They were still going through that same battle back in the ’60s. We left kind of a conservative base in the ’50s to get more liberal and ‘we want our freedoms,’ and we’re still battling with that, I think.”

If you go …

WHAT: “Last of the Red Hot Lovers”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday through March 22 and 3 p.m. March 16 and 23

WHERE: Trumbull New Theatre, 5883 Youngstown Warren Road, Niles

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $17 for adults and $15 for students and are available online at trumbullnewtheatre.tix.com and by calling 330-652-1103.