The set looks like something from a Norman Rockwell painting.

The actors are at the top of their game.

And the hilarity that ensues on the stage makes for some of the most genuine laughter an audience on the Central Coast has gotten to experience at a live show in a while.

The Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts’ latest production, “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” the famous comedy by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, opened last weekend to a nearly full house.

The play covers the mayhem that ensues when critic, wit and radio personality Sheridan Whiteside slips on an icy doorstep while dining at the Ohio home of a prominent family and injures his hip, leaving the erudite urbanite confined to the house for a six-week period.

The PCPA cast, which included some of the theater’s best known actors, brought that mayhem to life.

Sheridan Whiteside is played by David Studwell, who carries out the sarcastic one-liners the play is famous for, well, famously.

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Whiteside’s equally witty assistant, Maggie Cutler, is played by Kathleen Mary Mulligan.

Mrs. Stanley, who is starstruck by the personality who has laid claim to her home but struggling to be obedient to her increasingly frustrated husband, is played by guest artist Polly Firestone Walker. The role of that frustrated husband, Mr. Stanley, is filled by Peter S. Hadres.

Much of the hilarity circles around the entrance of man-crazy Hollywood actress Lorraine Sheldon, played by Heidi Ewart, and her advances toward Bert Jefferson, played by Andrew Philpot, an eager reporter anxious to report news of Whiteside to the small Ohio town.

Other Hollywood guests, Beverly Carlton, played by Michael Jenkinson, and Banjo, played by Joseph Foss, keep the laughter coming. The roles were based on characterizations of the playwrights’ friends, Noel Coward (Beverly Carlton) and Harpo Marx (Banjo).

Vanessa Ballam, who made her PCPA debut as Gertrude McFuzz in Seussical, is quickly becoming an audience favorite. Here she plays Whiteside’s much-chastised nurse Miss Preen with the same vigor she put into the Seuss-inspired character.

Other characters include Whiteside’s push-over of a doctor, Dr. Bradley, played by Matthew Tucker, the nutty but endearing Harriet Stanley, played by Melissa M. Mitchell, and the eccentric Professor Metz, played by Eleise Moore.

Also taking center stage are a cockroach farm, an Egyptian mummy and a case load of penguins.

Descriptions of the play suggest it oozes with nostalgia, basic optimism and gleeful anarchy. This production’s director, Roger DeLaurier, makes sure each of those sentiments is tangible in every element: From the set and the costumes to the actors and the penguins.

“The Man Who Came to Dinner” will play through May 13 at the Marian Theatre on the Hancock College campus in Santa Maria. For tickets, which range from $16 to $25.50, call the PCPA box office at 922-8313.

BOX OFFICE:

“The Man Who Came to Dinner” will play through May 13 at the Marian Theatre on the Hancock College campus in Santa Maria. For tickets, which range from $16 to $25.50, call the PCPA box office at 922-8313.

Emily Welly can be reached at 739-2220 or ewelly@santamariatimes.com.