Bert to Ernie: Let me sleep!

Wubba wubba. Whoot. Splat.

Bert and Ernie are making some unusual sounds in "Bert & Ernie, Goodnight!," Barry Kornhauser's overstuffed one-act play with prerecorded music that premiered Saturday in Minneapolis. The sounds are just one aspect of an arsenal of physical-comedy weapons, props and tools that director Peter Brosius has employed to get a rise out of audiences. And he succeeds, even if you can see the pratfalls and jokes coming from a mile away.

The loud, highly choreographed antics of the two muppets, given a wacky human embodiment by Bradley Greenwald and Reed Sigmund, make a trip to the Children's Theatre worthwhile. The show may be a contrived bit of pillow-spilling, wall-falling bedlam, but it's silly fun.

Greenwald and Sigmund, two versatile performers who were so charming a few seasons back in "A Year with Frog and Toad," depict the "Sesame Street" best friends and roommates with well-rehearsed physical comedy and a wide vocal range. These two performers use facial expressions and gestures to give their characters emotions that cannot be as easily summoned by puppets. And they carry along those who have fond memories of the children's TV show. Sigmund's Ernie, who is the wild one to Greenwald's straight man Bert, even exhibits some of the vocal inflections of Jim Henson, who originally voiced Ernie.

Bert and Ernie are opposites. Neat-freak Bert, who irons his sheet before he goes to sleep, is tired. He has retired for the night, but Ernie, who is lying in his own bed in the room, will not let him sleep. A compulsive worrier, Ernie finds it hard to rest. A dripping faucet rattles him. He has questions about the universe, which need answers now. He has started a poem on a typewriter and needs a rhyme for "dirt."

In the end, the orderly and controlled Bert loses it, surrendering to a chaos that reaffirms his friendship with Ernie.

Yin and yang? Id and ego? Or just peas in a pod? Bert and Ernie seem to complete each other in a show where their affections are entirely chaste.

Director Brosius has pulled out every other trick in his stage bag. The show has tap-dancing puppet sheep, sing-along pigeons that look like baby vultures and bubbles falling from the ceiling. (The bubbles come well before the end, and it is a marvel to watch Sigmund and Greenwald lose the audience to this effect, then regain their attention.) Sometimes the props are overused. But it works for its ideal audience. My 6-year-old was entranced on Saturday, sitting at the edge of her seat and whisper-yelling to Ernie a word that rhymes with "dirt."

Still, for something like this, you would like a live band. And how could the musical numbers not include "Rubber Duckie," perhaps Ernie's most famous "Sesame Street" number?

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390