In Laura Numeroff's 1985 social treatise If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, she uses the analogy of a mouse to illustrate the dangers of welfare. If you give a mouse a cookie, she warns, he'll want milk. And once he has milk, he'll want a place to sleep. Soon free food and shelter won't be enough. Now he wants a story - free entertainment! - and before long, he's trashed the house you earned for yourself and your family with the sweat of your brow and the competence to succeed. Your misguided generosity will never be enough, and society will collapse into squalor. Mice live in holes, Numeroff explains, because they're inherently weak and unambitious. We humans live in houses because we deserve them, and should feel no obligation to reward poor decisions by lower-class life forms.

Or wait, maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Ayn Randian parables aside, Olympia Family Theater's stage production (adapted by Jody Davidson) is a mostly two-hander about a mouse who takes advantage of a boy's good nature. Director Jen Ryle uses a thin setup as the impetus for a manic tribute to "Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers." She's aided in this laudable goal by an actor, Amy Shephard, who was pretty much born to be a hyperactive mouse in children's theater. Expressive and petite, she whizzes around the stage like her butt's on fire. Next to the aptly named Jon Tallman as the boy, clambering over Sarah Sugerbaker's delightfully oversized set, Shephard looks about three feet tall. It's a terrific illusion that works throughout. Tina Olson, Jan Rocks and Ryle deserve praise for a kitchen full of scaled-up props. The show ends abruptly, buried in wreckage, its audience of rug rats in hopeless hysterics.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Through May 29, Thursday–Saturday 7 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m., $8.50–$15.50
Olympia Family Theater, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia
360.753.8586