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So (as Dr. Freud might say) what comes to mind when I say the word "wieners"? Or "boobs"? Ok, what about just plain "sex"? You're probably not thinking about a guy in a chicken suit.

I guess that's proof you haven't yet seen the Buttered Niblet's irreverent production of Sex a.k.a. Wieners and Boobs. Five years after co-authoring Sex, playwrights Joe Lo Truglio, Michael Showalter and David Wain teamed up again to create the indie-ironic film classic Wet Hot American Summer. Both works reveal a similar delight in crass absurdity. Sex a.k.a. Wieners and Boobs is kind of Samuel Beckett meets South Park. It's a hilarious meeting, and not half as bleak as it sounds.

The play opens as a new sheriff arrives in Teaneck, N.J., a town run by gigolo warlord Tad Theaterman and populated by townspeople complicit in the rampant sex trade. After falling in love with a fallen woman named Hillary, sheriff Jack Greenberg sets out to get the girl, close the whorehouse and take down Tad.

The plot sounds like that of a morality play for the Passion of the Christ set, but Sex is essentially a collection of delightfully incomprehensible vignettes, which take full advantage of the luscious lasciviousness of the town business, and play it for laughs. Such as: when a wanton French madame sends us into a flashback of herself as a young American protester getting dumped by a robot. Or when Hillary gets down to business with a banana in her boudoir.

And those scenes at least have something to do with the ostensible plot. We're frequently zooming off into half-sub-plots and unexplained sketch comedy setups, too. There is the scene of Tad Theaterman's mother throwing up after every bad joke his father makes. And the inexplicable five minutes in which we are plunged into the office politics of a struggling telemarketing company. Not to mention that fleeting glimpse of a guy in a chicken suit.

The play's use of structural convention only serves as a foundation for setups needed for hilarious and absurd physical comedy. The plot and characters are only ciphers, transparently reduced to comedians riffing on premises with potential.

But the comedians play those premises to the hilt, and there is at least one good laugh for every scene. The cast is remarkably strong: the chemistry and camaraderie between them help make the show lively and amusing. Senior Zach Goodman brings great charisma to the stage, and is able to turn from a lover-boy sheriff to angsty teen on a dime, keeping both offbeat and funny. Senior Jerome Fox only has a minor part as the Arellano Theatre Art Director, but even while sitting silently at a table, he can get laughs just by his dead on portrayal of an artsy-fartsy dweeb. Junior Adar Eisenbruch is so alert to the audience that he can time and emphasize his jokes according to their tastes, injecting a little bit of improvisation to great effect. Junior Jackie Jennings, given easily half a dozen fairly minor parts, manages to make them all unique. All of the actors in the piece pull their weight, obviously giving their all and throwing themselves into the absurd half-world of Sex with great success.

The exuberance of the performers is echoed in the way they utilize the space of the stage. Their entrances and exits are quick. They form lines and march around with swaying hips and jazz hands. They form bizarre tableaux. Signs on a projection screen near the ceiling are the only indications of the settings to be imagined from the bare stage, but that bareness is worth it, since it provides room for such antics.

One corner of the stage, however, is taken up by the electric guitar player, junior Will Chang, who provides the soundtrack. His still presence in the background is funny in its own right, and the music he provides adds a crucial polish to the production. A contrast is created between the sophisticated music and the deliberate clumsiness of the stage action, highlighting the play's delicious absurdity.

The production revels in the humor that stems from absurdity. And everything, from the campy pictures on the projector screen, to the finessed guitar licks, to the crazed shenanigans of the cast and characters, add to the delightful sense of the absurd.

You won't think back on Sex a.k.a. Wieners and Boobs and think about the economics of the sex trade or the state of gender relations in America. If you do, you missed the point. But you will look back on the show and remember that you laughed a couple dozen times in just an hour and a half. And those laughs are surely worth the price of admission.

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