The Nora Theatre Company’s terribly funny and nimbly-acted production of Alan Ayckbourn’s bedroom farce: ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR  has just been extended through August 25th– and with good reason!  Here, the holidays become an escalating disaster as we observe three socially climbing couples over the course of three successive and increasingly hysterical Christmas Eves. I normally hate farce. Something about the forced jollity and improbabilities shoved down one’s throat that makes all but the best-directed, conceived, and acted hard to swallow. This production succeeds on all fronts– with plenty to think about, as you laugh yourself silly.

The action begins in Jane and Sidney’s modest but overly tidy kitchen–Jane (Samantha Evans) would just as soon scrub an oven as breathe–something she  eventually does in the middle of a party at someone else’s kitchen in Act II. Jane and Sidney are hosting a Christmas party for Sidney’s work colleagues, hoping to impress and advance. But we never see the action in the living room–only the spill-over as various couples invade the kitchen sometimes shedding their public personas so we see who they really are.

And they’re quite a collection. In addition to the aforementioned OCD-inclined Jane, and her materialistic phony of a husband (David-Berger-Jones), there’s Ronald–hilariously played by Steven Barkhimer as a semi-comatose stuffed shirt who calls his snooty wife Marion  “old sausage.” He’s inert to her drinking problem which Stephanie Clayman plays to the dipsomaniacal hilt. She’s a scream. The third couple are Eva–a drug-addled depressive who brings Dorothy Parker’s famous poem “Resume” to life– and her philandering architect husband Geoffrey played with smooth smarm by a mustachioed Bill Mootos.

We never meet the fourth couple, the Potters, who remain offstage as chaos–storms, electrocution, plumbing disasters, and finally a rabid house pet– escalates around them; the husbands’  fortunes flip from first act to last, and their wives are reduced to ever more desperate coping mechanisms. We watch with glee at the absurdity of their tumult, but our schadenfreude is tempered with some discomfort at recognizing bits of ourselves in them: who among us has not wanted to get ahead? It’s this tension between unease and full-on, free-wheeling farce that makes Ayckbourn’s three acts so satisfying. Throw in the Nora’s miraculous cast, Dan Gidron’s smart sleek direction, and you’ve got a midsummer night’s Christmas Eve with all the trimmings. Nothing absurd about that. See The Nora Theatre Company’s ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR at the Central Square Theater NOW EXTENDED through August 25th!!