Pirates, meet the kitchen sink.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta “Pirates of Penzance” comes pre-packed with enough silly antics to make for a cute evening of light theater. This is, after all, a musical featuring inept pirates, Keystone Kops and a plot that hinges on a leap year loophole.

That’s wacky enough, but not for Valley playwright/actor/director Ben Tyler, who’s at the helm of the current summer show of “Penzance” at Gilbert’s Hale Centre Theatre. He’s mined the script for every possible double entendre, pop culture reference and fourth wall-breaking gag — everything but the kitchen sink and if it would have earned a laugh, he might have included one of those, too — and thrown them in with abandon, though thankfully without shipwrecking the show’s easy spirit.

Match that comic wackiness with some wonderful singing from the cast, and it’s easy to say Tyler and company have crafted a near-perfect summertime show.

I say near-perfect only because this production is plagued by the usual

“Penzance” scurvy — the words often get lost in a mush of inarticulation. It’s not a problem for regulars to the pirate ship but, in the wake of garbled recitative, new stowaways might feel lost without a libretto.
Here’s the plot in a pinch: Young Frederic (played by Jeffrey Walker) is mistakenly snookered into a life of piratery — his parents wanted him to be raised a pilot, not a pirate, we’re told, ha ha — and becomes an apprentice to an ineffectual band of scalawags. On his 21st birthday, he vows to leave them but first falls in love with sweet Mabel (Nicolle Alexandre) and must help keep her sisters from being abducted by the unruly (but benign) pirates. Along the way, the pirates discover Frederic was born in a leap year, thus making him not 21 but, technically, five years old, meaning he’s stuck with them for a while.

Besides amping up the humor, the Hale’s “Penzance” features another twist due to its in-the-round layout. While rows of seats surrounding the stage make the production more immersive, especially when some of the cast members hide in the audience later in the show, it also highlights the fact that the Hale’s stage is teeny-tiny. When most of the cast is on stage together, it’s so cramped you almost expect a mosh pit to break out.

Oddly mushed lyrics and cramped stage aside, there’s much to love about what Tyler has done with the musical. For one, Frederic isn’t above a little Elvis-worthy pelvic thrusts to earn a lady’s swoon. During the song “Oh False One, You Have Deceived Me,” the nurse Ruth (Hale regular Andrea Pruseau; not haggard and homely like most Ruths tend to be casted) takes a weeping pause before another verse, and when the audience applauds, she breaks whimper to stick a finger into the air and cut them off.

Walker is dashingly handsome in that melodrama-hero way, and his voice is fine. He and Alexandre share the play’s only stab at sincerity, their love ballad, “Ah, Leave Me Not to Pine,” and its tender sweetness is so heartfelt, it’s jarring amidst the freewheeling comedy. But, and this is often the case in productions of “Penzance,” Walker is often upstaged by his seafaring boss, the Pirate King, played by Joseph Kremer, who’s got the stage charm and grin of Sean Hayes, Jack on TV’s “Will & Grace,” only more buff and swashbuckling than swish. Thanks to his commanding presence and comedic timing, Kremer rules the theater.

Gilbert and Sullivan purists might have a minor tizzy with how Tyler has tinkered with their dear “Pirates of Penzance” were the Hale to have staged this kitchen-sink comedy anytime other than summer in the Valley.

But the heat has fried our brains, and after a tiring day in the sun, an evening of serious theater might be sleep-inducing. This “Penzance” aims to wake you up with a bevy of catchy songs that have more hooks than a ship full of pirates’ arms, and keep your ribs tickled with nearly two hours of irreverent jokes. And that’s pretty cool.