Arena Stage is giving pratfalls for Christmas.

And to be honest, it isn’t a bad gift. For its final production of the holiday season, the company has staged Noises Off, a farce that is always a crowd pleaser. And this particular production has its share of charms, even if it wasn’t on your list this year.

Noises Off is that literary standard, an amusing play-within-a-play. A goofy group of actors is staging a complicated production laced with slapstick and double entendres, where things can easily go awry. And they do — first at a technical rehearsal, then a little worse as its tour goes on. By the time the final performance rolls around, the players’ personal lives are in chaos, and the results are more than apparent during a cacophonous final act.

The play is delightful in the right hands, if a bit exhausting by the third act when we’ve seen the same bedraggled production of the fictitious “Nothing On” both from the audience and from backstage, and are in for one more outrageous round. We’re saved from any monotony by the impish Helen Carey as Dotty Otley, a seasoned actress playing the role of the put-upon housekeeper Mrs. Clackett. Already hysterical in the second act, as she tortured her costar lover by tying his shoes together, here she completely lets loose with no regard for the play-within-a-play’s actual script, bringing the work to a zany climax.