Florida Studio Theatre opens its Summer Mainstage Season this Friday with the return of Inspired Lunacy, an irreverent and comedic musical revue featuring novelty songs from great 20th century writers and songwriters such as Allan Sherman and Shel Silverstein in an attempt to explore the curious and often absurd nature of the human condition through song. Created by Richard and Rebecca Hopkins, FST artistic director and managing director respectively, years ago for the Cabaret, this will be the production’s first appearance on the main stage.

“Believe it or not, it took us 15 years to get here,” said Richard, who continued to build the show in the intervening years and also serves as director this time around. “But we have more than enough material to put a great show together now and it makes a real full-bodied mainstage show.”

In addition to works from Silverstein and Sherman, greats like Ira Gershwin, Bobby Darin and Kander and Ebb lend whimsical and darkly comic tunes such as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” and “Jolly Old Sigmund Freud” to the tale, with the cast of five performers seamlessly transitioning from character to character, song to song, scene to scene, using only themselves and some choice and zany props. FST veterans Gil Brady, Don Farrell, Dane Becker and Kathy Halenda return, joined by FST newcomer Dennis Kenney. With no downtime or scene changes, it’s easy to imagine the strain on the talent, but the actors say otherwise and enjoy the spontaneity. “With a show like Spamalot, if you’re not trying to imitate the genius of Monty Python at least a little bit, people will be disappointed,” said Brady, who did perform in FST’s production of Spamalot. “With something like Inspired Lunacy, we’ve got a lot more room to be inventive.”

But while it’s all in good fun, Hopkins is clear that the show is about more than just surface-level laughs. Laughter itself is celebrated, in its power to unite and ability to restore. “It’s an easy thing to overlook,” said Hopkins, “because sometimes we think that laughter is free and it comes easy.” But that’s not always the case, he says. For some, laughter is hard. For some, a little more laughter would be therapeutic. But even further, laughter can bring people together and reveal aspects of our existence that too often go unnoticed. “Most comedy is dealing with the foibles of human nature and those foibles are very close to the center of our being,” said Hopkins. “We’re laughing because it’s universal, a recognition of a universal truth.”

Inspired Lunacy opens Friday, June 5, in Gompertz Theatre at 8pm.