This is a peculiar little play, but a heck of a lot of fun.

Sandbox Theatre is opening its second season with Artistic Director Ryan Hill’s play “Koogoomanooki” and it’s a great showcase for the inventive sort of work that they do.

“Koogoomanooki” takes the standard office/workplace/cube farm play and turns it on its head. To say it’s absurd and slightly surreal would be understatement. It’s also very amusing.

Gil Salvatore (Derek Miller) gets a promotion and a spacious new office, the envy of his coworker Tyler Taglimont (Nathan Surprenant). The powers that be, represented by Mrs. Behrens (Heather Stone) and her two intimidating attendants (Alia Mortensen & Avye Alexandres), have big - and unusual - plans for Gil and his office. Gil’s skittish assistant Ms. Blanc (Alayne Hopkins), formerly assistant to Mrs. Behrens, knows there is great cause for concern about what’s coming.

I won’t spoil the surprise - and trust me, there’s a big one - and I feel safe in saying that you’ve never seen it before (how often can you say that about a new play?).

The script, also directed by Hill, is an extremely clever bit of wordsmithing. Patterns of speech and behavior get repeated, turned inside out and handed off from one character to another in a text that is as smooth and skillful, and funny, as the performances that bring it to life. This is an original voice, and one that doesn’t lose the humanity of the characters underneath the wordplay.

Derek Miller, so good as the lead in a recent Cromulent Shakespeare Company production of Aristophanes’ “The Birds,” is once again a great choice to head up the ensemble of a completely different kind of comedy. His interactions with others, in an attempt to cling to normalcy as things get very weird all around him, provide the show with a firm anchor in this alternate reality.

Nathan Surprenant, decked out in porn star mustache, is an endearing comic foil for Miller. Alayne Hopkins brings a welcome dash of melancholy to the proceedings as the secretary who first rebuffs Gil’s advances, and later regrets it when he slips beyond her reach. Nobody plays a wackjob quite like Heather Stone - and Mrs. Behrens is one very odd duck, with one very strange agenda. She’s a hoot. Adding that last touch of menace to events are Mortensen and Alexandres as Attendants 1 and 2. They are responsible for the evening’s big reveal - and aren’t entirely in agreement on whether it’s the right thing.

The imposing set design (also by Hill), a wall composed of just slightly unreal boxes in different solid colors, black outlines prominent, gives way to something even stranger as the one act progresses. In many ways the design is quite spare, allowing a pencil, a chair, a coat rack or a framed painting to take on major significance. The costumes by Andrew Lawrence Schiff have just the right amount of detail - making them recognizably real, and unreal, at the same time. The lights by Phillip Marten, and especially the eery (uncredited) sound design, add the last level of detail to a carefully constructed world.

If you haven’t yet seen a production by this new theater company, this is a fine introduction. If you have, well then, I don’t need to encourage you too much to see their latest outing, since you’re probably already planning on it. It’s a weird and amusing evening of theater and I highly recommend it.

I’m looking forward to what they’re all up to next (for Sandbox, that would be this fall, with “Zelda: Wonderland” - as for the individual artists, be sure to keep an eye out for them, they’re high quality wherever they turn up)

Sandbox Theatre presents “Koogoomanooki” now through March 26, 2006, at the Red Eye 15 West 14th Street in Minneapolis.
Showtimes:
Remaining Performance Dates: March 11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 25 and 26.
'Pay What You Can Night' Monday, March 20, 8:00.
Showtimes are 8:00 Thursday through Saturday, and Sundays at 7:00.
Tickets are $16, group rates available, call 612-554-1302 for reservations. For more information, visit www.aboutthisplay.com