We’ve all sat around debating the age-old conundrum, “Did William Shakespeare really write all those plays?” All right, maybe that’s only the stuffy English grad students among us. Rorschach Theatre’s production of The Beard Of Avon offers its own answer to the heated question, but the results prove much more than an academic exercise — instead, it gives us a delightful romp through the lives of the usual suspects in the Shakespeare controversy, from Sir Francis Bacon to Edward De Verve to the (faux?) Bard himself.

In the play, Will Shakspere (sic) is a bumbling theater groupie who delights in “playing at poetry,” engaging in rhyming games somewhat reminiscent of Fezzik and Inigo’s exchanges from The Princess Bride. He stumbles his way into a pretty pathetic acting gig (though we must remember that “there are no small parts”, as Scott McCormick’s sonorous director Heminge reminds us), and eventually makes the acquaintance of Edward De Vere, a nobleman with a knack for playwriting but with no desire to lose his social standing if his art were to become public. Shakspere becomes his non-de-plume, and a friendship and partnership is born, which naturally gets more and more complicated as the play progresses.