The action is set in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the 1950s, which turns out to be where playwright McNally, born in 1939, spent his teenage years. We follow the exploits of a young man named Joshua (Ryan Diana). “Don’t call him Jesus,” an off-stage voice shouts, “people will think he’s a Mexican.

Noel Coward, the man who modestly admitted to a talent to amuse, knew the joys of repertory. For many years in England’s resident, repertory companies, an actor who played a king one night would do his best to conjure a beggar the next night. During the hungry 1930s, Coward composed a series of 10 short plays to keep himself and his pals employed.

    There are moments early during Syracuse Stage’s current production of Radio Golf where you don’t feel you’re in an August Wilson play. We see an attractive, well-turn

Not that the plot of this 100-minute intermissionless fun fest cannot be followed, especially if you can check with attentive friends when it’s over. What we have here is a hotfoot for pedestrian reviewers who might feel the need to try to explain all the plot twists.

Twain buffs will have to squint to find marks of the author’s distinctive hand in the action or dialogue. The expected satire, usually Twain’s long suit, is marginal. Replacing it is farce. Even including “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” nothing with Twain’s name on it is a greater laugh riot.

Nothing in this show ever stoops to petit bourgeois ingratiation. So we have non-stop talk about sex for about two hours, stylized penises, even a forced striptease (down to a body stocking), but not one pant of eroticism. The playwright’s celebrated raucousness is reduced to about a half-dozen laughs.

Subtle shifts in guidelines for this year’s Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) award nominations produced some unexpected competitions.

Trim (maybe too trim) and blonde (a lighter shade than before) Lindsey (Danielle Valeriano) survives in a barren apartment with no place to sit down. A knock at the door brings a discarded boyfriend, Jordan (Ryan Santiago). Suspicious, she growls that her meddlesome parents or his own nosey nature might have sent him to check up on her.

We never fail to notice that actress Kimbrough is of African-American parentage. This is not nontraditional casting. She’s supposed to be black, although no other Egyptian or member of the cast shares that heritage.

Melissa writes to Andy, “You’re always doing the right thing—all the time.” And more teasingly, given her abilities as an artist, “I’ve drawn pictures of us with our bathing suits off.