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Somewhere in the middle of Theatre 40’s spirited performance of “Twelfth Night,” the servant Fabian (Rachael Lyerla) steps up to the audience, cheekily pulls down her character’s elasticized beard, and declares, “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.”

Director Steven William, abetted by a more-than-able cast, seizes upon this line, one suspects, and turns his rendition of the play into a festival of metadramatic madness. The program notes offer a clue, “The Scene: A stage in a theatre,” to suggest what’s truly at play here.

Theatre 40’s “Twelfth Night” isn’t, however, a one-trick, one-note rendering. The ensemble of six actors turns in a layered performance. Working with manic costume changes and foreign accents and character types to help delineate their multiple personalities, the actors inhabit their roles with gusto.

Michael Bonnabel’s Malvolio is particularly memorable. Played hilariously like a French bohemian Bill Murray on drugs, his Malvolio is a study in comic timing, effectively reduced to a curiously piteous figure by the play’s end.

One of the production’s undoubted highlights is the luminous Yael Berkovich. Berkovich, who evidently trained at the Globe Theatre in London, has that rare ability to captivate the audience with what seems the slightest of efforts. As Feste, the melancholic clown, Berkovich proves to be a superlative minstrel singer, and Williams unabashedly makes full use of her musical talents. Berkovich also doubles as the production’s live sound effects person, performing to the side of the stage in full view of the audience in a clever coup de theatre.

Clashing head-on with the much-lauded Shakespeare’s Globe performance of the same play, Theatre 40’s “Twelfth Night” runs the unfortunate risk of being steamrolled by an internationally acclaimed juggernaut. This smaller undertaking, however, is not without its own ambitions.

With its Brechtian set changes, bold strokes, lightning pace (the show clocks in at two hours flat, compared to the Globe’s three), zany characterization and overall theatrical zest, Theatre 40’s “Twelfth Night” might just be different enough to recommend itself as a viable and vital interpretation.

It’s a production that is not by any stretch perfect, but the overall performance has a way of making one forget that.

-Alex Wen