Long before you probably heard a note of his music, you might have noticed that the Belgian-born singer, songwriter and sometime actor Jacques Brel had an effortless knack for seducing the camera. Coffeehouse cool in the 50s and early 60s; suitably seedy in the 70s, his was a face that seemingly lived every lyric he ever wrote — and he was seldom snapped without one of the Gitanes that would silence him at the age of 49.

Not being even middle-school fluent in French, we came to Brel’s story-songs of “birth and death and everything in between” through the relatively rocky route of some Bowie cover versions — and from there it was a short hop to a yard-sale copy of the soundtrack album to a revue called Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

Most of us here in L’états who’ve heard anything composed by Brel (other than this mellow 1974 chart-topper) know him through the Off Broadway revue, a surprise success when it opened on the modest stage of downtown’s Village Gate in 1968. Co-starring (and with new English lyrics contributed by) Mort Shuman — one half of the great popsong partnership that brought us this and this and this — the collection of some two dozen Brel cabaret classics broke onto Broadway, became a film in 1975, and has played to audiences around the world ever since. Beginning Tuesday night, May 17, it comes to the stage of the Two River Theater as the final mainstage offering of the 2010-2011 season.

The last of the shows selected under the tenure of former Two River Theater Company artistic director Aaron Posner, Brel arrives alive and kicking in Red Bank under the stewardship of the company’s new A.D. John Dias, who’s populated the four-player ensemble (traditionally, two women and two men) with an eclectic group of young Broadway veterans. There’s kick-ass stage/screen actress and indie rocker Rona Figueroa (Miss Saigon), plus Andy Kelso (Mamma Mia), jazz  chanteuse Lindsay Mendez (Everyday Rapture) — and Forrest McClendon, who, as reported right here a couple of weeks back, has been nominated for a 2011 Tony (for his work in The Scottsboro Boys).

In charge of the cast is a man who’s also Tony’d up here in 2011 — Daniel Ostling, one of the charter members of Lookingglass Theatre Company — the Chicago-based troupe that was awarded this year’s (non-competitive) Tony award for Regional Theatre. The upperWETside Drama Desk spoke to the in-demand scenic designer, prior to the opening of his first professional show as director.

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