Whither, Mr. Furley?

Somewhere between a scene in which a cross-dressing Viola is forced to comically choke through a cigar with Orsino, and another wherein an Old World Three Stooges (Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Feste) use a reedy houseplant for absurd eavesdropping cover, a strange thought occurs: Southwest Shakespeare Company’s season-opening production of “Twelfth Night” is only a costume and set change away from being “Three’s Company.”

In director Jared Sakren’s version, the story is intact: shipwrecked young woman Viola (played by Maren Maclean) dons men’s clothing to play personal assistant to Duke Orsino (Cale Epps), whom she secretly falls in love with; meanwhile, her attempt at matchmaking between Orsino and Countess Olivia (Jennifer Bemis) only results in Olivia falling for the “Yenta’d” Viola.

But looped around the story, Sakren has allowed his actors to lightly overplay their parts, to inject more contemporary commentary and overreact as broadly — and often brilliantly — as John Ritter and Don Knotts. It makes this “Twelfth Night” lighter and funnier than it would be otherwise.

There’s certainly a Knotts-like quality in the freakout that overcomes Olivia’s assistant, Malvolio (Michael Bailey), who through a bit of side-story mountebank by the Stooges and fellow assistant Maria (Andrea Pruseau) is punk’d so badly he goes from a self-loving Jeeves to Furley-size nutjob over the course of the play.

Of course, Sakren’s choice of update for “Twelfth Night” isn’t a ’70s-era two- bedroom apartment. Rather, he’s set this tale of midsummer madness on an island off the coast of South America circa 1897. It’s a benign adaptation, a take-it-or-leave-it kind of affair.

It could be set in futuristic Mars for all we care, with such wonderful acting going on. From the start, Epps’s Orsino is a drunken burp away from rivaling Larry Soller’s Sir Toby Belch in Dionysian excess, and everyone — including Jim Roehr’s keen Feste — has a solid knack for comic timing.

I was initially concerned that Maclean plays her Viola with too much austerity. We don’t get a sense of the character’s emotional complexity given her surroundings so much as simply see her react to the advances of Olivia and tease around the flirty edges with her boss, Orsino.

But it’s all for good, because depth should take a back seat in an airy comedy like this “Twelfth Night,” the closest thing to a sitcom the Bard ever proffered.