Indianapolis Civic Theatre's 2007-08 season brought music to life, from Elton John's "Aida" to the Frank Sinatra revue "My Way," but the season finale is all about comedy.

"Leading Ladies," a comic farce set in York, Pa., during the 1950s, is good, old-fashioned fun -- and good-natured theater that makes fun of itself.

It's no surprise that Civic's program quotes Ken Ludwig, the playwright, as saying that he loves Shakespeare's high comedies and "screwball film comedies of the 1930s and '40s." "Leading Ladies" comes across as a mix of both.

This rousing comedy of errors is the tale of two English Shakespearean actors, Leo Clark and Jack Gable, who aren't exactly realizing the American dream as they tour the fraternal lodge circuit in small Pennsylvania towns. In fact, they're broke.

When they come up with a scheme to impersonate the heirs of a dowager allegedly on her deathbed, the fun begins when the heirs turns out to be nieces -- and when the dowager keeps coming back from the dead, like a bad slasher movie, but without the blood.

Director Robert J. Sorbera celebrates Ludwig's particular brand of humor by bringing precision and revelry to a farce that calls for proper English gents to squeeze into evening gowns at a moment's notice, and for proper American ladies to run up flights of stairs in high heels.

Bill Book is hilarious as Leo and his alter ego, Maxine, complete with copper-colored curls and a cultured contralto. When David Wood (Jack) is decked out as Stephanie, sporting a wavy blond wig and cat glasses, he looks way too much like Dame Edna.

As Aunt Florence, the dowager who never dies, Ethel Booth cuts a formidable figure because she's tiny but feisty, and not nearly as frail as her quack doctor says.

Mikayla Anne Reed grows considerably as Florence's niece Meg, because, by the end of the show, Meg is still refined, but more fun-loving, and no longer satisfied with her dull fiancé, Rev. Wooley, played by Dan Flahive with a velvet voice and shifty demeanor.

Sally Mitchell plays Meg's friend, Audrey, as a chatty, college-bound waitress who tries to impress folks with her vocabulary, as she careens around on roller skates.

Set designer Robert Koharchik created an expansive interior for Florence's home, complete with grand staircase. Jean Engstrom's amusing costumes range from pert, conservative attire for Meg to a fun waitress costume for Audrey and outrageous gowns for the "ladies."