You could say that the Soapbox Playhouse is all washed up. With just four days to rehearse its annual production of A Christmas Carol, the theater company is flat broke. Its actors have more problems than a fourth grade math test, and the NEA is withholding funding until its inspector can evaluate the theater’s artistic merits—or lack thereof.

You see now where the comedy Inspecting Carol gets its title. It gets its mojo from Lavinia Hart’s knowing and spirited direction of a dozen or so skillful farceurs at the Hilberry Theatre. The actors may not have been skilled farceurs when they signed up, but they are now. Well, they came to Wayne State University for graduate education in theater and boy are they getting it.

The zany play-within-a-play concept may not be the newest idea—written by Daniel J. Sullivan and the Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1991, it owes a little something to Michael Frayn’s 1983 comedy, Noises Off. It owes a little more to Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 play The Government Inspector, in which a newcomer is mistaken for the titular functionary. Conversely, it may have influenced the 1996 movie Waiting For Guffman, which also takes place at a smalltime theater.

The newcomer in Inspecting Carol is a struggling young actor named Wayne, played with a slightly demented naivete by Nick Stockwell. He’s just trying to get an audition but is pleasantly surprised when he’s welcomed by all with an enthusiasm that even extends to his ideas about how to “improve” their play.

An “improved” version of Dickens’ classic? Not-such-a-spoiler alert: There’s a payoff coming. It arrives in the second act, it’s tears-in-the-eyes hilarious, but playwrights Sullivan and company make us wait and wait. Hart’s Hilberry performers and designers do their best to make the time fly but there’s an awful lot of exposition. Moreover, most of the characters have two identities: their own and the ones they play in A Christmas Carol. It takes a while to sort out Sydney, who plays Marley’s Ghost, from Phil, who plays Bob Cratchit, and from Bart, who plays a passel of people.

That may be more of a problem for a critic striving for accuracy than it would be for a play-goer out to have a good time. And despite its sometimes slow progress and a denouement that fizzles, “Inspecting Carol” is a good time. On the way to that uproarious disaster of a play within the play there are highlights to savor.

You’ve got Devri Chism, as British-accented Dorothy, with a straight face, leading her fellow actors in the sort of physical exercise (it has something to do with an imaginary lemon) that would embarrass normal people. You’ve got Brandon A. Wright, as an actor with a paralyzing fear of trap doors in a play where traps are crucial; Wesley Cady as a child actor who has grown too old to play Tiny Tim, and too heavy to be carried around; Michael Phillip Thomas displaying leadership qualities as the leading actor, the one who plays Scrooge.

There are luminaries offstage as well. Fred Florkowski’s set will be called upon to work as hard as the actors. Mary Leyendecker’s costumes range from contemporary street clothes to Victorian “Christmas Carol” regalia. Michael Sabourin’s props range from the chains Marley drags behind him to the cell-phone charging cord that Wayne drags behind.

Natalie Colony’s lights isolate when they need to and include when they need to, complemented by Thomas Libertiny’s sound design. Technical director Brian Dambacher’s practiced hand is everywhere.

God bless them, every one.

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