Actor’s Summit’s “A Christmas Carol” (make that “The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society Presents…A Christmas Carol”) is as twisted, convulted and drolly amusing as its long title suggests. The five players that Actors’ Summit, a Knight Arts grantee, cast in the lighthearted farce are uniformly charming and strong in their roles.

Here’s the set up from which all descends into hilarity: a local British women’s group, which regularly puts on plays, decides to go for a version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” which, if anyone recalls the tale, is mostly filled with male characters. That might seem strange enough of a challenge, but Actors’ Summit ramps it up even one more step. The cast for this production is four men and a woman (Laura Stitt as stage manager Gordon; Zach Griffin as Mercedes; Frank Jackman as Thelma; Neil Thackaberry, who is co-artistic director of Actors’ Summit, as Mrs. Reece; and Gabriel Riazi as Felicity). See we have men playing women playing men — and sometimes other women, when the script calls for it.

Shades of the movie “Victor/Victoria,” which had a woman playing a man playing a woman, and which was as much daffy fun as playwrights David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jr.’s version of this play. As you might expect from several of British sitcoms and series, local British characters can be stock characters — and they can be incredibly funny.

Here we have two matronly types (Thelma and Mrs. Reece) who seemingly are rival theater goddesses, if only in their own minds; Mercedes, who, as we see repeatedly during the play, is an accident waiting to happen (she has several, each time more serious and obvious than the last); and Felicity, who is stage struck and ready to take over every scene through commanding singing and frumpy dancing.

That all is set to happen, but gets off to a rocky start because the audience has gathered and none of the players is ready to go on. This theatrical device lets the fourth wall disappear, for the audience watching is actually the make-believe audience that is part of the script. Audience members (plants to be sure) are brought into the production to cover for ailing or missing characters.

Somehow through it all the tale actually gets told, all the while the real audience is howling at the antics of the strained and over-the-top characters. This behind-the-scenes comedy, like others in the genre, works — on a silly and fun-loving level. Part of the success has to do with the actors. They ham and posture just where they should; they show their real talent in being able to play several characters, beginning with the initial one that they are another gender; and they handle the equivalent of a door-slamming farce with aplomb.

Actors’ Summit, “A Christmas Carol.”

Another part of why this play holds its own is Mary Jo Alexander’s costumes. Alexander, who is co-artistic director of Actors’ Summit, has to make the costumes funny but theatrical at the same time. She has to dress and provide make up for men to look like women (and they do, at least from the fourth row) and a woman to look like a man, but reverse all that as the characters assume alternate genders. She did an amazing job.

“The Ferndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society Presents…A Christmas Carol” will be performed Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. through December 22 at Actors’ Summit theater in Greystone Hall, 103 S. High St., Akron; 330-374-7566; www.actorssummit.org. Tickets are $28-$30.