It's harder to write effective farce than it looks. The difficulties of plot construction rival those of a time travel story. All those slamming doors and sexy misunderstandings demand twisted but understandable logic, so even as characters make foolish mistakes, we know why it seemed like a good idea at the time. Robin Hawdon's Perfect Wedding, a kind of Joe Orton lite, is a well-written farce. It uses the setting of an overworked hotel on a chaotic nuptial morning to chase the story of an even more confused night before. Apparently, Bill slept with Judy in the honeymoon suite. That's a problem, because Bill isn't marrying Judy, he's marrying Rachel. He enlists his best man Tom to cover for him, but once an innocent bystander named Julie gets involved, the lies spiral out of control. As in Orton's What the Butler Saw, the object is to mock sexual impropriety while grabbing any excuse to strip pretty girls to their knickers.

Hawdon's script is terrific, fast and funny despite an awful (and repeated) joke about "leaving in a huff." It's racy but not too racy, smart but not too smart. Olympia Little Theatre would be wise to acquire every script this guy ever wrote. If the object of OLT's production was to generate laughter without offending more sensitive audience members, then mission accomplished. Let's not be too condescending about that - every company has to pay its bills. I enjoyed the production on a superficial level, and so will its intended audience. Perfect Wedding is probably the best farce I've read since Lend Me a Tenor in 1986.

Unfortunately, it's also my job to notice how a show could be improved, and from that standpoint, OLT offered much to work with. The problem began when board president Toni Holm placed the show in "the mid-70s," a declaration I failed to convince her to retract later. The actors use American accents. No problem! The problem is they're using British phrases. Maybe director Kathryn Beall believes setting the show in the disco era helps justify phrases like "bloody hell" and "jammy bugger." Maybe it does ... until characters refer to and use "mobile phones." Confusing the issue further, the soundtrack quotes "Jessie's Girl" (sorry, Toni, it was 1981) and "(I've Had) the Time of My Life" (1987). The production seems to be aiming for an unspecified fantasy milieu, so why name a decade at all? This show doesn't seem to know, or perhaps care, where it is - but we do.

Performances are uneven, lacking even the hint of arc conventional in farce. There's a marked lack of chemistry all around, especially between Bill and Rachel or Judy. It's totally OK that these actors are greener than Kermit the Frog; that's the point of community theater. What's not OK is the pause one could fly a plane through which follows every line. This start-stop delivery dissipates Hawdon's madcap machinations and adds flabby minutes to the show.

Over the last few years, I've watched actors like Ken Luce and Rick Pearlstein grow by leaps and bounds at OLT. As these new actors hone their skills, they should work first on pacing and urgency.

[Olympia Little Theatre, Perfect Wedding, $10-$14, 7:55 p.m. Thurs. - Sat., 1:55 p.m. Sun. through June 17, 1925 Miller Ave. NE, Olympia, 360.786.9484]