NEW YORK — Any regular theatergoer has to love a play that opens with the owner of a loudly ringing cell phone getting shot through the back with an arrow.

Not all the lewd and wacky gags in The Play What I Wrote, which opened Sunday at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre, are as instantly appealing. Luckily, there are so many of them that the law of averages guarantees a good time.

Previously an Olivier Award-winning hit in London, Play is the naughty brainchild of Hamish McColl and Sean Foley, a comedy duo inspired by U.K. TV comics Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise.

For Yanks, the broad and distinctly British slapstick humor that McColl and Foley have crafted with collaborating writer Eddie Braben may at times bring to mind the more iconic import Benny Hill. But Play also operates on the principle that has driven popular American films such as Airplane! and the Austin Powers series: Throw enough jokes at the wall, and the ones that stick will redeem the ones that don't.

Directed with breezy wit by Kenneth Branagh, Play develops from the premise that Foley and McColl's partnership is threatened by the latter's ambition to mount his original French Revolution-based drama, A Tight Squeeze for the Scarlet Pimple, on Broadway. Accordingly, the script for Play has been adapted slightly to include references familiar to Americans, and particularly to New Yorkers and theater fans.

For example, as Foley's hapless friend Arthur, droll supporting actor Toby Jones attempts to fool McColl with guises ranging from the fictional theater impresario Mike Tickles to actress Darryl Hannah and Shubert Organization head Gerald Schoenfeld, who is parodied as a whining, hysterical rube.

Play also features a nightly surprise celebrity guest, whom the creators work into the plot in a way that strives to ensure maximum embarrassment. At the preview I attended, the willing victim was Kevin Kline, whose flair for both outrageous and deadpan humor was perfectly suited to material that required him to play the effete thespian one moment, then romp around in a hoop skirt and wig the next.

Not that the show's stars are easily upstaged. The sharp, lanky Foley is an ideal foil and antagonist to the breathless, mock-affected McColl, and their rivalrous yet co-dependent relationship spawns endless physical, sexual and scatological pranks. Suffice to say that if you blanch at the thought of men referring to or falling on body parts that lie below the waist, this probably isn't your cup of tea.

But there also is something poignant about McColl and Foley's reluctant rapport and the bliss they find in entertaining. In Bring Me Sunshine, one of several cheeky musical numbers, they sing, "Bring me laughter/All the while/In this world where we live/There should be more happiness."

It's a sentiment that makes the giddy goofiness in Play seem more profound, especially in these times.