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“The Mikado,” says Sean Graney, is Gilbert & Sullivan at their best. “The music is beautiful, the songs are wonderful, the story is so convoluted and so crazy and so ridiculous, there’s so much celebration in the way that they look at this world.”

Jeannette Bayardelle plays multiple characters and wrote the text and music for “Shida,’’ about a fledgling writer.

“The Mikado” remains a clever, light-hearted entertainment, and the Hypocrites have given it a high-octane dose of additional zing that even die-hard fans will embrace, while neophytes will finally understand the staying power of Gilbert and Sullivan. 

This 60-minute descent into self-delusion offers a haunting and occasionally humorous window into the lengths people might be willing to go in pursuit of fame.

The degree of difficulty in the style of the play, both in terms of Ravenhill’s writing and the performers’ agility, is engagingly high. … Anytime A.R.T. or anyone else wants to bring Ravenill or One Year Lease Theater Company back, I’m there.

Any resemblance between the struggling visual artists in the play and the people who make small-company theater is, well, not entirely coincidental.

The fast-talking, wisecracking Wax knows the ins and outs of such hospitals. The child of Jewish immigrants who left Austria to escape the Nazis, she grew up in a suburb of Chicago. She says she was depressed as a child, but her condition went undiagnosed.