According to the play's director, Kit Wilder, Incorruptible pokes fun at all kinds of targets, from religion to prostitution.

Set at a monastery in Priseaux, France, in 1250, the play is inspired by an actual 10th-century feud between French monasteries over the bones of St. Foy, which were highly coveted because they were said to have healing powers. (St. Foy--the patron healer of the blind and the bald--was a 12-year-old girl who was beheaded by the Romans in 303 A.D. for refusing to convert to paganism.)

When the play opens, St. Foy's bones haven't produced a miracle in Priseaux in seven years, which results in a decline in offerings from pilgrims and village peasants. Without those donations, Father Charles (San Jose Stage's literary associate, Kevin Kennedy) and his monks are left with very little money to feed the needy--as well as themselves.

With nowhere else to turn, the monks decide to follow the advice of a one-eyed minstrel (Gene Carvalho), who recommends that they steal dead bodies and pass them off as the corpses of saints. In the author's notes for the script, Hollinger claims "this sort of thing really happened."

Actor Bob Greene, who plays the business-minded Brother Martin, Father Charles' right-hand man, admits he was a bit stunned by the dark humor when he first read the script.

"Being from a Catholic background, it was a bit shocking. I felt guilty reading the script. The Catholic guilt kicked in," Greene jokes. "I was wondering how much the audience was going to be turned off by the subject matter. It's a little hard to make comedy out of people fooling around with bones, especially after Sept. 11. But it's lighthearted, and it's really good writing."

According to Wilder, Incorruptible may be an irreverent, Monty Python-esque farce, but there's also a spiritual and slightly serious side to the script.

"At the heart of the play is a very real and touching story of people who are looking for a part of themselves that's missing," Wilder says. "Father Charles says again and again, 'Well, maybe this weird thing that we're doing--digging up all of these bodies--is allowing us to do what we're really supposed to do, which is to help the poor and the needy.' "

Wilder says formulaic television sitcoms could take a cue from the character-driven humor in Incorruptible.

"Incorruptible is what situation comedy really should be: People who find themselves in ridiculous situations and are revealed through that. We come to understand them better somehow," Wilder says. "Too often, sitcoms stop focusing on character and just put cardboard characters into ridiculous situations. They become joke machines. This play is very funny, but it isn't a joke machine because the jokes are linked to a particular character and the way that person responds to the world. The jokes lead up to some sort of meaning."

Wilder is glad that after several sessions of auditions, he and the company's artistic director, Randall King, found actors who are able to balance farce with depth.

"It's the kind of show where it's not just people standing around talking. It demands a kind of comic style that a lot of actors don't really have a handle on," Wilder says. "We needed to find a group of eight actors who knew how to play this kind of comedy. It's very broad and sometimes borders on slapstick, but it's also rooted in real situations and character. That's tricky to do--to balance the outrageous with the real."

Incorruptible will run Nov. 27­Dec. 22 at the San Jose Stage Company, 490 S. First St., San Jose. Tickets are $16-$36. For more information, call 408.283.7142 or visit www.sanjosestage.com.