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The cast of Stage West’s Unnecessary Farce has the necessary skills to make this slight little comedy burst with fun moments.

Paul Slade Smith’s play is one of those silly, door-slamming, peel-your-clothes-off comedies that only work if the actors throw caution and decorum to the wind. The seven actors, under Jan Alexandra Smith’s wily direction. make all the physical slapstick and comedic timing look effortless.

Ian Marten’s set shows the adjoining rooms at a motel, and the first thing you notice is the plethora of doors and two beds, all of which are going to be used and abused.

Mayor Meekly is suspected of embezzling millions of dollars, so a sting operation has been set up. Officer Sheridan and a rookie officer, Billie Dwyer, have teamed up with accountant Karen Brown to trap the mayor. They installed a camera and recorder in his room to record his meeting with Brown. Sheridan and Brown had a wild, but chaste, assignation the previous night and find it difficult to keep their hands off each other. What these three unsuspecting innocents don’t know is that they’ve been set up, and at least one of them is going to be the victim of the infamous Highland Hitman.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith lets us know instantly that Sheridan is a bit of a klutz as he gets tangled in the telephone cord as he’s trying to get dressed, but he’s also full of himself, especially lording it over his young, inexperienced partner. His libido is in overdrive every time he is alone with Brown.

Jenny McKillop plays Dwyer like the Energizer Bunny, full of expectations on her first big assignment. There are moments, especially in the second act, when McKillop is literally bouncing off walls and furniture.

As Brown, Sarah Irwin spends most of the play stripping down to her slip, one of the traditions of farce. There is a very funny joke with her trying to let Sheridan and/or Dwyer know when she’s in trouble, but of course they are never watching the monitor when she’s explaining how hot she is.

Patrick Brown plays Mayor Meekly with reverence to his name. The big running joke with Meekly is that he keeps walking in on the other characters when they are in the most compromising of situations, and his reactions are priceless.

Mike Tan plays Agent Frank, the mayor’s head of security, initially as a tough lawman, but it’s all a charade. He is a terrified, mousey man because he has been moonlighting as the Highland Hitman’s assistant. He has seen the assassin at his worst, but even funnier, he is convinced Brown wants him to seduce her.

Agent Frank says if the Hitman dresses in full Scottish garb and plays the bagpipes, someone dies an excruciating death. It’s another of the play’s running jokes that paves the way for the killer’s entrance, and Matthew Mooney doesn’t disappoint. He makes Todd pretty intimidating, especially when he is in full garb and wearing a tall bearskin hat. It’s all the more fun that he gets knocked unconscious so often. There is some very funny shtick as MacDonald-Smith tries to drag an unconscious Mooney into the bathroom. There is another running joke that the angrier Todd gets, the thicker his brogue and faster his speech. It seems that only Dwyer can understand him, so she interprets for Agent Frank and the audience.

Elizabeth Stepkowski Tarhan makes a late entrance as the mayor’s wife, whose first husband was Scottish. It’s pretty clear who she really is, and there is a hilarious bit of physical comedy when people are walking over the bed, and Stepkowski Tarhan chooses to roll over it.

Stage West did Unnecessary Farce several years ago. If they want to remount comedies, they should look no further than the Ray Cooney British sex farces they did so well in the past. They were, and still are, far funnier than Unnecessary Farce.