The Loading Dock Theater has never looked so good -- a shocker considering that the stage is spewing garbage. Gremlin Theatre is responsible for the festive papering; it's the perfect trash heap from which to launch A Devil Inside, a sidesplitting, smart and brutally absurd whodunit.

Devil is laced with clever Dostoyevsky references and random, dark humor. At times, David Lindsay-Abaire's script seems impressed with its knowledge of the classics, which it refers back to when zaniness starts to derail the narrative. But literary references are used in the least pretentious, most self-deprecating way possible.

Two characters -- a vodka-drinking, chain-smoking Russian literature professor and his smitten student -- plot their own "Crime and Punishment." As the professor, Jim Pounds is powerfully convincing as a sneering, self-loathing Raskolnikov type. When he pointed his rifle in my direction, I ducked.

Jaimi Paige portrays his student, a pony-tailed beauty who fancies herself like Anna Karenina until she opens her mouth and reveals the self-centered, hyperactive brat inside. As partners in crime, this duo is so duplicitous, so funny they'll make you laugh until your insides hurt.

Meanwhile on the black horizon, an ornery artist named Lily (Tina Frederickson) ate some bad mincemeat and has been puking ever since. A hapless repairman (Steve Lewis) is overcome by the devil motif on his wallpaper. Sadder still, a skateboarding punk named Gene (played with hair in his eyes by the boyish Ryan Parker Knox) is hit by a car while trying to solve the murder of his father, a 416-pound man whose feet were lopped off as he powerwalked the Pocono Mountains in a desperate attempt to lose weight.

Director Matt Sciple's cast performs brilliantly and with great energy. One breakout performer is Karen Wiese-Thompson, who plays the skateboarder's mother. With her shrill outer-borough accent and dingbat antics, she's like Edith Bunker with a jinx. She deadpans stories of her hairy epileptic father and of her infant brother being devoured by dogs. She entreats her son to avenge the death of his father, presenting him with the dead man's feet, which she has preserved for 14 years in a pickle jar with formaldehyde.

Slowly, we realize how the murder ties these characters together -- indeed, as the program notes suggest, with a Rube Goldberg-like cartoon complexity. As the intricate story unfolds, it sinks deeper into a ridiculousness in which you can bask. Thanks to a well-written goofball script and knockout cast, Gremlin dreams up a Devil so funny it's dizzying.

Christy DeSmith is a Minneapolis writer.

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