The Game's Afoot or Holmes for the Holidays, Lyric Stage Company of Boston, through December 17, 617-585-5678 or lyricstage.com

William Gillette portrayed Sherlock Holmes on stage over 1300 times. In fact, the celebrated actor established the famed sleuth's iconic sartorial style by donning a deer hunter cap and brandishing a curved briar pipe for his portrayal. Not surprisingly, playwright Ken Ludwig (of "Lend Me a Tenor" fame) has focused on a get together turned actual mystery at Gillette's home in his 2011 farce "The Game's Afoot: Holmes for the Holidays."

Now gifted actor-director Fred Sullivan, Jr.—who wowed Lyric Stage Company of Boston audiences with an inspired laugh fest staging of "The Play That Goes Wrong" last season—has proven once again that he has a magic touch with madcap comedy—once again with a first-rate Lyric cast.

While the set for "The Play That Goes Wrong" was purposely meant to go wrong itself in side-splittingly funny ways, the brilliant Janie E. Howland construct for "The Game's Afoot"—namely Gillette's handsome Connecticut castle—becomes a kind of character all by itself.

Howland has smartly detailed the rich wood interiors with colorful theater posters, a repertoire of striking weapons and a pivotal bookcase sporting a Yorick—recalling a skull that would be perfect for a production of Hamlet. Shakespeare becomes a constant frame of reference for Gillette, who finds affinity with Henry V as both the actor and the royal see life as a game.

In "The Game's Afoot," Gillette's 'game' involves a séance and eventually a murder—not that of the host—shot but not killed while playing Sherlock Holmes at the Palace Theatre—but rather of hated Vanity Fair writer Daria Chase. Suspects naturally abound as Chase revels in deprecating Gillette's guests.

Sublime Maureen Keiller, dominating the first act as Chase, riotously roasts those in attendance. Designer Chelsea Karl attires her in elegant red evening wear that matches her fiery verbal volleys. Taking over the often silly proceedings in the second act is Peter Mill as Inspector Goring. A very versatile actor with a knack for making the most of such gender-bending roles as Mary Sunshine in "Chicago," Mill becomes a veritable scene-stealing hoot as the energetic woman detective—who sees female sleuths as the wave of the future.

Throughout the play there are such amusing moments as a suggestive putdown of an actor whose swimsuit is too loose-fitting and a well-timed slapstick-rich sequence during which the revolving bookcase malfunctions as efforts are made to conceal Chase's body. Kelby T. Akin handily plays would-be Holmes successor Gillette as he seems to compete with Goring in the effort to solve the murder case. Akin brings rich authority to such vivid histrionics as a brief reference to Richard III.

Remo Airaldi as Gillette's best friend Felix Geisel exchanges lively banter with Keiller's sardonic Chase. Airaldi and Pamela Lambert as Felix's savvy wife Madge make a convincingly caring couple. Sarah Sinclair is properly enigmatic as Gillette's mother Martha. Dan Garcia has the right cluelessness as Simon Bright, and Gabrielle McCauley catches his fiancé Aggie Wheeler's wariness. John Malinowski's lighting smartly complements the séance and the thunderstorm.

"The Game's Afoot" may not quite run the gamut of comic inventiveness achieved by "The Play That Goes Wrong." Even so, Sullivan, Jr. scores another Lyric Stage winner that would easily please Gillette himself.