Some family secrets can kill – quite literally, in the case of Marisa Wegrzyn’s dark comedy, “The Butcher of Baraboo.” Moxie Theatre’s West Coast premiere of the 2007 play is rolling-in-the-aisle hilarious. With an outstanding cast and precision co-directing by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg and Chelsea Whitmore, the sit-com-on-crystal-meth humor comes fast and furious in this dysfunctional family drama.

Valerie is the titular butcher of Baraboo, Wis. When her husband Frank went missing and was subsequently presumed dead, the gossip around town was that Valerie and her meat cleaver had something to do with it. But any one of Valerie’s oddball family members could easily be a suspect, from her apathetic pharmacist daughter Midge to her brother-in-law Donal to his wacky wife Sevenly. Meanwhile, Frank’s sister, the town cop, tries to suss out the truth of her brother’s death.

Each of the deeply flawed characters harbors a potentially devastating secret, and part of the show’s fun is trying to figure out what the next big revelation will be. This also means plot points are better left undisclosed.

Linda Libby: Is this a meat cleaver I see before me...

Photo: Erin Bigley

Moxie’s crack comic team includes DeAnna Driscoll in a supremely over the top portrayal of the big-haired, Billy Joel-loving, barely competent police officer Gail. Her experimentation with meth and suicide recording are comedic highlights. Wendy Waddell is deliciously deadpan as Midge, who seems to have just blown in from the land of snide. Midge wears her contempt for the small town and its social conventions on the outside – nose ring, blue-streaked hair, black nail polish.

Linda Libby’s Valerie layers anger and nastiness over still-fresh emotional wounds, while Jennifer Eve Thorn plays the wide-eyed Sevenly (the seventh of seven children, who has six kids of her own) with a deep-fried side of crazy. Don Evans gets the relatively less interesting role as the nearly normal Donal.

Amy Chini and Esther Emery’s gorgeous set includes Valerie’s very functional-looking kitchen and a sliding door that leads to a snow-covered back yard. Jennifer Brawn-Gittings dresses the cast in appropriately bland Midwest attire straight out of a Sears catalogue, with overly modest dresses for the almost certainly Mormon Sevenly. Meticulous sound and lighting by Matt Lescault-Wood and Ashley Jenks, respectively, are also perfectly suited to the play.

Whitmore and Sonnenburg demonstrate an excellent sense of Wegrzyn’s biting, off-kilter humor. “Butcher” features a cast of off-the-wall characters. Valerie affectionately fondles her cleaver. Midge sells pharmaceuticals to junior high school kids. Sevenly reads to chickens. Gail’s idea of family bonding is sharing illicit drugs. The co-directors make the most of the playwright’s bizarre situations and pitch-black wit, aptly taken to the point of absurdity rather than played straight.

Which is not to say that Wegrzyn doesn’t have anything serious to say.

The play reminds us, in the most extreme way possible, that family secrets and the inability to communicate can lead to resentments, simmering frustrations and even deadly consequences.

Love hurts! But it can also be riotously funny – and it just doesn’t get much better than Moxie’s production of “Butcher of Baraboo.”