The last time King’s College staged a John Patrick Shanley play, it was “Doubt,” and student Allen Bonk, of Nanticoke, portrayed a priest suspected of molesting a child. The plot was heavy, disturbing, mystifying. Bonk, for one, is glad the theatre department’s next production, “Italian American Reconciliation,” also by Shanley, is more light-hearted.

“It’s a breath of fresh air,” Bonk said. “It is definitely more in the style of ‘Moonstruck,’” said director Sheileen Godwin, naming yet another Shanley offering, the 1987 film in which Cher played a widow who falls for her fiance’s brother. “Italian American Reconciliation,” which King’s will present Nov. 9 through 18 in the George P. Maffei II Theatre, is “a fairy tale, a folk tale,” Godwin said.