William Shakespeare's plays work like Silly Putty against newspaper comics. Place one of the Bard's scripts over an idea (say, a grunge "Macbeth," as Actors' Renaissance Theatre did brilliantly last year), press down and pull up to reveal a fresh creation — then stretch to see how far, or how silly-looking, it can get.

His "Twelfth Night," a gender-bending comedy of romance and mistaken identities (think "Return to the Blue Lagoon" mixed with "Yentl," only intentionally funny), has been given the Southern treatment by Phoenix's The Shakespeare Theatre in a show that runs this month at the Phoenix Theatre's on-campus Little Theatre.

It's a sort of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" that plays fast and loose with its adaptation's accuracy (the costumes and Southern accents can get spotty) but manages to answer a long-burning question: How would Shakespeare have written the script for "Cannonball Run?"

Here's "Twelfth's" plot in a pinch: Brother and sister Sebastian (played by Franc Gaxiola) and Viola (Kerry McCue) are shipwrecked and end up believing each other is dead. But Viola has actually ended up dressing as a young boy to land work as a second-hand man for Duke Orsino (Tom Leveen). When he/she is sent as a messenger to woo the fair Olivia (Natalie Winters), Olivia ends up falling for him/her instead.

Whoops!

It's hard to find a relevance for pairing the South with Shakespeare. His language doesn't lend itself well to redneck drawl. But the show, directed by Tim Shawver, plays its many gags and jokes to the hilt — and like "Cannonball Run," ends with a manic all-cast scene then a sweet resolution. All that was missing was a blooper reel during the credits.

This "Twelfth Night" offers some great performances, from the Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum of side characters Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Damon Dering) and Sir Toby Belch (Wes Martin) to the almost British staunchness of Olivia's assistant Malvolio (Bruce Laks).

And as cross-dressing Viola, McCue (last seen in Stray Cat Theatre's sublimely disturbing "Patty Red Pants") took her character in a direction I'd never before seen: confident and headstrong, reacting to the plot's twists and turns largely with a sharp comic tongue and "so what's next?" attitude. (Most Violas have a sort of confusion about them.) McCue shines here.

The only performance flop is in this production's Feste (Michael Bradley), the minstrel fool who Shakespeare uses to paint a pointed picture — that Feste is the wisest of the silly characters, that the clown can be the master player. It's a strong opportunity for any actor, but Bradley seems more interested in playing pseudo-countryish music on his acoustic guitar; he wrote the show's elementary musical score and, to his credit, delivers some fine singing. But his acting is hardly up to Feste's challenge.

The Silly Putty gets stretched pretty thin for this "Twelfth Night," but amazingly the putty doesn't break. Streamlined to a one-act, 90 minute show that bubbles over with wit, it's likely one of the more unusual adaptations you'll see. It's even more out-there than what I saw two years ago: "Twelfth Night" in a rave. That was stretching it too far.