Brett Milanowski, actor and producing director for (expletive)-Faced Shakespeare, has seen his fellow cast members sneak off to order pizzas mid-performance. Milanowski has witnessed highly trained actors have their pants fall down. He has watched Juliet skip committing suicide by Romeo’s side in favor of facetiming her mom from the stage.

These are the kinds of things that happen when a bunch of sober actors get on stage to do Shakespeare with one half-in-the-bag thespian. At first glance, the conceit of the (expletive)-Faced Shakespeare company seems aimed at tearing down the Bard by making sure a cast member is tipsy enough to create chaos — one cast member, under care and supervision of their peers, starts drinking before the show and generally keeps drinking until the end.

But there’s more to it than that.

“It’s silly, ridiculously, embarrassing and fun,” Milanowski told the Herald ahead of the May 3-June 22 run of “Much Ado About Nothing” at Somerville’s Rockwell.

“But we can be 40 minutes into this show, and beers have been poured, beers have been spilled, there have been dances done, then Benedick and Beatrice proclaim their love to each other,” he continued. “And then Beatrice tells Benedick, to go kill (his best friend) Claudio. And Benedick tells her, ‘Not for the wide world.’”

Suddenly, the silliness has been squashed by an emotional gut punch. It turns out the magic of Shakespeare can’t be crushed by a bit of booze. Of course, the booze does prevent this production from being Sir Kenneth Branagh and Dame Emma Thompson at Royal National Theatre.

For nearly a decade, the American version of the UK company has been doing Shakespeare classics at Davis Square’s Rockwell — after this final run at the Rockwell, the company will move to a new home (stay tuned for details). Milanowski has been with the company since the beginning and early on he expressed the same confusion about the premise as so many audience members have.

“I was very skeptical about it,” he said. Then he won a spot as a cast member and the UK team sent along a few video clips to study: “There was a little Hermia (from ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’) who was hammered and she was on stage and people were going crazy. I had never been so terrified watching something in my life because it was absolute chaos and the actors had to contain it, and control it, and figure out a way to incorporate it into what was happening.”

Milanowski says his ensemble is careful not to put anyone in danger — the cast member chosen to be the drinker for the night has to be in a good physical and emotional state and the whole company sticks around during a sober up session after the show. But, well, somebody is hitting the bottle while everyone else tries to keep a theatrical masterpiece on track. And, even cut to an hour run time, these are still masterpieces.

“We don’t trick people into liking Shakespeare, but get them to have an easier entry into Shakespeare,” Milanowski said. “We are having our water hour after the show and can hear people through the curtain, we can hear guys go, ‘Dude, that was (expletive) amazing,’ because they bought into the characters and had a live theater experience that engaged them.”

For tickets and details, visit therockwell.org