Though I admire the Bard of Avon, I'd never before seen or read one of his first plays, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. It isn't highly prized. Some commentators, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch among them, believe Shakespeare farmed out its ending; even the play's CliffsNotes sniff, "(The play) doesn't appear to have much merit." Geez, with friends like that, it's a wonder the play's going through something of a reappraisal. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival staged it to much acclaim this season, and Animal Fire Theatre, Olympia's summer outdoor Shakespeare company, is giving it a go under the direction of the multitalented Kate Arvin.

It's a rough-and-tumble group, with easily transportable scenery and easily washable costumes. (Those costumes, by the way, are the best in the company's history. This owes in part to Ricky German, last seen in drag for Toy Boat's The Maids.) There's nary a weak link in the cast - though, as is apparently common for this play, canine member Tonks steals the production without so much as a snarky aside. Scott Douglas is solid in four roles, and Sean Canning's heightened performance and running musical commentary are much appreciated. I did see a fair amount of variation in acting styles, notably between Morgan Picton's modern cadence and Maddox Pratt's more presentational style, but didn't find that off-putting. I did wish for greater variation in voice and movement among sets of characters played by single actors, and it occurred to me the company's "animal" method might be used profitably to address this in future productions.

Perhaps the best thing about this comedy is it incites actual laughs. So what's so bad about it? To be sure, it isn't laden with deep thoughts. Then there's the matter of Act V, which presents an attempted rape, followed by an ambiguous line that could both reward the aggressor and treat the character of Silvia as chattel. Arvin's response was to treat these issues like other factual errors in the script and breeze past them. That makes sense. Two Gents is, as she notes, a "ridiculous story" in a "silly world." And here's the thing: so what?

Throughout human history, from the plethora of dick jokes in Lysistrata to Brick Tamland lobbing a trident, smart folks have often found themselves laughing at silly, childish, even vulgar material they were told was beneath them. In this play alone, we get dick jokes, vagina jokes, dog pee jokes, cross-dressing and awful puns. That's all OK. I'll take Cameron Diaz's hair gel over P.G. Wodehouse almost any day of the week. I love Twelfth Night's "great P's" and A Confederacy of Dunces' gastric gross-outs and yes, Dom DeLuise choreographing the French Mistake. So those jokes don't make us better people. They make us happier people, and isn't that constructive enough?

Two Gents' performance schedule is erratic and hits three different stages, so visit AnimalFireTheatre.com for specific details.

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, through Aug. 10, Animal Fire Theatre, Olympia, free, www.AnimalFireTheatre.com