Copperstate Dinner Theatre has always been a dependable purveyor of musicals and farces. Shows like Long, Martin, and Tichenor’s whacky The Complete History of America (abridged) is tailor-made for this company. From the same trio that brought us an evening of Shakespeare’s complete works, this script presents a slightly left-leaning look at the tumult that is the New World’s melting pot. The jokes are plentiful, a wild mix of low and highbrow, intellectual and obvious. The cast is small, the technical requirements limited. In the capable hands of Peter J. Hill and Noël Irick, the show simply needs to be cast, wound up, and let loose on the audience. There’s a lot of silliness here, a perfect accompaniment to dinner.

However, the production is not without its problems. The cast of three, Hill, Jack Dwyer, and young Matthew Krause, are not always in synch with each other or their material. Dwyer is the most consistent, the kind of performer that manages to be likeable and just a bit snide all at once. He never goes too far, and is a good base for all of the wild antics that ensue. Hill is prone to indicating and pushing for the laugh. He often gets it, which makes him the strongest overt comedian, but he has a tendency to crack himself up too often, which can work against the comedy. Krause is the sweet, innocent-faced member of the trio, which means he is the whipping girl. Krause is prone to sounding scripted, something that Dwyer avoids and Hill uses to his own effect, and so Krause’s comedy comes more from his physicality and the situations he is placed in. There is sometimes a lack of spontaneity from the trio, but there are plenty of moments that split the audience’s sides. It’s a case of three guys being silly while playing fast and loose with our country’s hilarious past and succeeding more often than missing.

The limited design element is also hit-and-miss. Jesse Berger’s sound design and Irick’s costumes contain a few punch lines in themselves, but Hill’s one-joke background gets old sometime after the War of 1812, and his lighting has a few interesting effects and a lot of holes that the actors drop into.

It’s not the strongest production of this script I’ve seen, but there’s more good than problematic as Dwyer, Hill, and Krause riff on Washington, Lincoln, and all of those other fatted sacred cows Americans hold so dear.