TRENTON, Mich. — Imagine what a play written by comedian Steve Martin would be like. That’s exactly how Picasso at the Lapin Agile comes off. His unique, if not absurd, humor shines through in each of the characters and all of their dialogue.

You don’t have to be a fan of the author to appreciate the play. You also don’t have to be an art or science expert, although there are a few esoteric references that the geeks will appreciate more than the average theatre goer.

The premise for the play is unusual. A young Pablo Picasso (age 25) and an even younger Albert Einstein (23) meet up in 1904 at a French bar called the Lapin Agile (French for Nimble Rabbit). Picasso was actually a customer at the Lapin Agile, an actual bar in Paris. His 1905 painting, “At the Lapin Agile,” now hangs at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and was one of Steve Martin’s inspirations for the play.

Directed by Topher Alan Payne, the 90-minute play runs without an intermission. But it zips along with the audience first waiting for Picasso to show up, and then trying to figure out how the mystery guest at the end of the play figures into the plot. I won’t give away the identity of the mystery guest, and even though he is never formally identified, audience members won’t have any problem quickly figuring out who he is.

Each of the actors shines in their particular roles. Melissa Beckwith is particularly noteworthy as Germaine, the smart female barkeep with a worldly cynicism. Her under-the-breath comments about her boyfriend Freddy (Joshua Brown) are especially funny. Brown seems right at home playing the other barkeep. He is the common thread that all of the other characters pivot off of and he offers up surprisingly wise observations. He has no problem holding his own intellectually with Picasso and Einstein.

Dennis Kleinsmith seems like he was born to play Gaston, the aging French playboy with a bit of a prostate problem which necessitates frequent trips to the bathroom, which he comically announces. I couldn’t help but feel the Gaston character is semi-autobiographical for Martin, since his humor seemed to shine through the most via this lovable but slightly perverted older man.

Alexander Sloan convincingly plays young Einstein, whose depth of knowledge at such a young age is astounding. While he’s certainly not the ladies man that Picasso so obviously is, he also gets distracted by the attractive female characters, including Suzanne (Allison Megroet), who is one of Picasso’s fangirls, and The Countess (also played by Allison Megroet) who he is waiting on for a date. Megroet does triple duty, also playing A Female Admirer for a brief but humorous scene near the end of the play.

Nick Yocum pulls off the complexity of the Picasso character quite well. He is charismatic, but also a philanderer. In today’s lingo, he’d be called a sex addict since he can’t seem to keep himself from jumping from one female’s bed to the next. But he explains it away in a charming way. His character is also self-righteous and pompous, believing he is more famous than he actually is. It’s hard to decide which is more important to him, his art or the ladies. They often seem intertwined.

Rounding out the cast are Lindel Salow, who plays the pragmatic art dealer Sargot and Garett Michael Harris, who nearly steals the show as the totally over-the-top Charles Dabernow Schmendiman. John DeMerell portrays the mystery Visitor in a way that is just the right side of camp.

The set is beautiful and absolutely first-rate and truly feels like a Parisian bar. Scenic designer Bradly Byrne shows much attention to detail, right down to the cocktail napkins on the bar. Costume designer Cheryl Zemke does a great job in conveying that it’s the early 20th century, when women still wore corsets and men wore hats and bow ties. Schmendiman and Gaston’s costumes were both slightly wacky, reflecting their personalities quite well.

It’s one of those plays that sounds odd when you try to explain the premise to someone else, but makes perfect sense when you see it first hand. And the players at Open Book Theatre pull it all together, and then some.

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