It started with a skit.

About a century ago, English writer Lauri Wylie crafted a comedy sketch for a stage revue. At a palatial home, a wealthy woman conducts a dinner party, assisted by her butler. No guests are present, each presumably having passed, but the butler nevertheless steps into each character as they toast their host, growing increasingly inebriated and informal.

A 1963 version for German TV has become a New Year’s Eve tradition in Scandinavian and German-speaking countries, where folks have annually gathered around the tube to watch that butler stumble and slur his way through the slapsticky sketch.

It may not sound like the kind of source material from which an enjoyable and ultimately touching hour of theater could emerge, but the Jungle Theater is presenting just such a show. “Dinner for One” is the brainchild of the company’s artistic director, Christina Baldwin, and she’s teamed with the production’s two actors — Sun Mee Chomet and Jim Lichtscheidl — to explore what lies beneath that seemingly superficial skit.

Each of the four absent guests gets considerably more fleshed out, their toasts longer and more deeply rooted in recollections. And the sense of loss and loneliness that gets swept under the tiger-skin rug in the original is brought out into the light of the chandeliers in the Jungle’s version. Yes, there are plenty of laughs, but “Dinner for One” is considerably more substantial than some sweet theatrical dessert.

At first, you might get the impression that the play will be a pantomime, for Lichtscheidl spends the opening scenes commenting on the action via subtitles that emerge from inside the lids of pots, on napkins and, ultimately, from a foldout card hidden inside his toupee. During those first vignettes, we’re introduced to the idea that Chomet’s Miss Sophie is in mourning, emerging to consider celebrating her birthday before choosing to retreat in resignation.

But then we’re thrust into a future in which frivolity holds sway. It’s up to the observer to consider whether Miss Sophie is resurrecting these friends in her mind’s eye by choice or as a result of dementia, but Lichtscheidl (and his butler character, James) seizes the opportunity to inhabit each of them as fully as the time it takes to toast Miss Sophie will allow. He becomes a bawdy, gregarious actor, a German admiral, a soft-spoken aspiring artisan and a possible former love interest.

But it’s love of a different sort that resonates as this story-of-a-sort unspools. It’s clear that James is a loving friend, sympathetic to Miss Sophie’s feelings of being unmoored from her support network.

The production is most compelling when James is getting deeply into his imitation of one of the guests and unwittingly veers too close to a painful place for Miss Sophie. Chomet’s face speaks volumes during such exchanges, and the emotional triage that follows from her devoted butler results in some complex and powerful scenes that resonate long after the lights come up.

This creation is enhanced greatly by the chamber music violinist Emilia Mettenbrink and pianist Lara Bolton send forth from a large painting on the wall of Eli Sherlock’s ornate set. It adds to the beauty of a work both funny and touching.

‘Dinner for One’

When: Through Dec. 31
Where: Jungle Theater, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S., Mpls.
Tickets: “Pay as you are,” available at 612-822-7063 or jungletheater.org
Capsule: A silly sketch gives birth to a sweet meditation on love and loss.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

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