If you’re looking for some light entertainment this weekend I recommend seeing “Noises Off” at Bremerton Community Theatre, said to be one of the funniest plays ever written.

“Footloose” at Central Stage Theatre of County Kitsap is also a good time, with the lesson in redemption safely sugar-coated with singing and dancing. “Shirley Valentine,” playing at the Jewel Box, is a one-woman poignant look at middle age with an uplifting ending.

But, if you want theater with teeth, check out “Buried Child,” opening Sept. 22 at Changing Scene Theatre Northwest, directed by Phil Mitchell.

The edgy little theater in East Bremerton is at it again, opening its season with a play no other local theater is likely to touch.

“It’s a little dark,” Mitchell said. “Actually it’s a lot dark, but there’s humor in it, too.”

That would be humor of the black variety, more likely to evoke nervous laughter than gufffaws.

The play by Sam Shepard won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 and was revised for Broadway in 1996. It’s the polar opposite of his big screen hit, “Shakespeare in Love.”

The setting for “Buried Child” is a squalid farmhouse in middle America at an undetermined time. The residents of the farmhouse are Dodge, the ranting alcoholic grandfather, his wife Halie, who is sanctimonious yet goes on drinking bouts with the local minister, their eldest son Tilden, once an All-American football star, now a hulking, sullen semi-idiot and their younger son Bradley, who has lost a leg in an unexplained chainsaw accident.

The play turns on the arrival of Vince, a grandson none of them recognizes, and his girlfriend Shelly, who can’t comprehend the madness she finds in this family, but ultimately brings light to their darkness.

Seems the family is harboring a dark and icky secret. Years earlier Dodge, played by Steve Ford, had buried an unwanted newborn somewhere on the farm. It only gets ickier as the play reveals the child’s parentage.

“This is about a family which becomes strange and dysfunctional due to the horrible, horrible family secret,” Mitchell said. “But it’s also a study of the American family, by showing where the extremes of a family could go.”

The play has a surrealistic quality to it that requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. Don’t ask where the corn came from or why no one remembers Vince.

Veteran actor Ford doesn’t pretend to understand the play.

“The whole play is full of contradictions,” he said. “I don’t try to figure it out, I just play it. I just think Sam Shepard was having a good time.”

For a thinking audience those spaces can be filled with interpretations, creating a unique experience for each theater-goer.

“The story happens in the mind of the audience, and that’s freeing as a performer to just present the piece, and let the audience make of it what they will,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell is working with a mostly veteran cast, including Eric Wise as Tilden, Sheryl Cole as Halie, Ryan Taylor as Bradley, Colin Carter as Vince, Brandy Thompson as Shelly and Jim Maddock as Father Dewis.

This is Mitchell’s third engagement at Changing Scene. He directed “The Nice Guy” for the 2006 Summerplay and acted in “Glengarry Glen Ross” last season. He was also Detective Stone In “City of Angels” at Bremerton Community Theater last season.

After more than 20 years as an amateur actor, Mitchell made the decision last year to change careers, and is now pursuing a career as a professional actor. He has had parts in productions in Seattle and will be in “Scrooge, the Musical” in Olympia this winter. He gives credit to his “supportive spouse” for allowing him to pursue his passion.

Mitchell said he took on directing “Buried Child” after studying the play in a drama class at Olympic College.

“I wanted a balance between doing things that are artistically fulfilling and making a living,” he said. “Directing this piece was worth making myself really busy for a while.”

Changing Scene doesn’t always fill the seats with its challenging plays, but they are always worth making time for.

“Buried Child” opens Sept. 22 and continues weekends through Oct. 14. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 6 p.m Sundays. Tickets are $12 adults, $10 seniors, students and military with ID, available by calling the theater at (360) 792-8601.

The theater is located in the West Sound Business Park, 5889 SR 303 NE, behind the Oroweat Bakery Outlet in East Bremerton.