Chief among the many pleasures of Artists Rep’s production of The Bed Trick is its talented cast, all of whom are as adept at batting witty banter as they are at creating pockets of emotional depth. 

Written by Keiko Green and directed by Luan Schooler, the play features a group of mismatched freshman dormmates. The most sexually sophisticated of the three, Lulu (Madeleine Tran), is in a relationship with Willis (Mac Schonher), whose attention is starting to wander on the dating apps. 

While Lulu becomes instant besties with the impressionable and virginal Marianne (Sami Yacob-Andrus), she shuns the third roommate, Harriet (Angie Tennant), who’s obsessed with Shakespeare, acting, and wearing overalls with a wild pattern.

If Lulu seems like a meanie who excludes Harriet, the other characters aren’t all that perfect, either. When Lulu gets annoyed with Willis, a reluctant Marianne helps her punish him by talking with him on the phone, pretending she’s Harriet. The plan backfires, though, as Marianne realizes she likes Willis, causing her to try to reconcile this attraction with the pristine image she has of herself as a good person who’d never hurt anyone else.

The four actors sparkle with their entertaining portrayals of teens – especially when Harriet jumps up and down and cries “Oh, my gosh!” with gleeful innocence. This is especially enjoyable if you caught Tennant’s devastating performance last year as the hard-edged Yelena in 21ten’s Uncle Vanya, a character that’s a galaxy away from this touchingly goofy college kid.

Yacob-Andrus, too, does an exquisite job of portraying the good girl who sets out to get some experience while desperately trying to hide her secret life. When Lulu tells her she seems unhinged, Marianne replies, “I’m so hinged” in a way that elicited one of many appreciative laughs from the Oct. 4 opening night audience.

Tran’s feisty Lulu is a riot, too, especially when she sees Willis’s dating profile pic is actually from an old photo of the two of them. “He cropped me out!” she cries, letting us know she’s going to make him pay for this transgression, possibly with blood.

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Not all of the Bed Trick is played for laughs, though. On hand to keep us grounded are Marianne’s divorced parents, Benny (Isaac Lamb) and Anna (Claire Rigsby). While both actors add to the physical humor of the show – Benny does a bit with a phone cord that keeps knocking stuff off his desk, and Anna is a bundle of uncertain tics, constantly posing and shimmying as if to prove she still has some sex appeal – these two provide some touching moments, such as when Anna stops swiveling her hips long enough to wonder if she’s become a mere joke.

Green’s script is lengthy – the play runs for about 135 minutes – yet manages to keep our interest throughout. Still, I found myself wondering if the show would work just as well if Green trimmed some of Harriet’s narration (as lively as it was) and let the story and its vibrant characters speak for themselves.

Much of the narration has to do with Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, a play in which Harriet has been cast as Helena, who performs “the bed trick” on her beloved Bertram by fooling him into sleeping with her when he thought he was hooking up with someone else.

In a comic scene, the earnest Harriet explains to her roommates with the help of a copulating teddy bear and sock monkey how this works. After Lulu questions the ethics of the trick, though, Harriet spends a lot of time worrying. Is Shakespeare making a joke, she asks herself, about abuse or even rape? For some, this may be an intriguing line of inquiry, while others may take it as being much ado about nothing, considering that Bertram is a nobleman, not to mention a guy with significantly more power in society than Helena.

However audiences see Harriet’s confusion, her concerns reveal Green’s aim to make The Bed Trick about more than sex. It’s also an exploration of getting older and questioning your idols, not to mention leaving home and making messy mistakes that cause later regret.

Schooler keeps a buoyant pace throughout as the characters become increasingly entangled in new complications. With actors from separate scenes onstage at the same time, lights (designed by Sophina Flores) nimbly direct our attention to where the action is, such as when the play bounces from Lulu and Marianne at a school dance to Harriet’s botched rehearsal for All’s Well. A witty phone ping (Cullen Elliott and Saibi Khalsa served as co-sound designers) and subtle music also signify major scene changes.  

The set design itself (by Tyler Buswell and Alex Meyer) is another source of delight. Predominately the dorm room, every wall surface is covered with ephemera, such as a skeleton and a Les Mis hanging, and the beds are plush with comforters and a menagerie of stuffies while strings of colorful lights twinkle overhead, a lifelike décor for kids who are asserting their emerging identities as they also cling to the comforts of childhood.

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With Artists Rep’s signature semi-immersive design on its lobby stage, the floor is also covered with a cushy carpet of green grass that reaches beneath the first rows of the theater seats and is strewn with autumn leaves, evoking the heady freedom of a college freshman crossing the quad on the way to their first class.

While audiences continue to revere the 400-year-old work of The Bard, The Bed Trick proves that contemporary writers are just as qualified to explore the messes we’re all prone to make in our lives, a theme that’s eternally engaging in comedies and dramas alike.

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The Bed Trick continues at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 S.W. Morrison St. in Portland, through Oct. 26. Find schedule and ticket information here.