On the highway, speed kills. In the deliciously goofy comedy, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged),” speed thrills.

This latest offering from Richmond Shakespeare leverages the fine-tuned comic sensibilities of director Joe Pabst and the exceptional skills of its hard working, three-person cast to deliver a rollicking laughfest sure to delight even the mildest of Shakespeare fans.

In fact, given the relentless silliness and snarky dismissal of much of his work, this might be the perfect Shakespeare-adjacent show for those who find the Bard and his canon of classics a colossal bore.

Originally conceived by the Reduced Shakespeare Company back in the 1980s, this kooky condensation of all of Shakespeare’s great plays plus his sonnets (sort of) has been regularly revised in the decades since, updating topical references so that the comedy remains fresh and surprising.

One great example happens early on when Joshua Mullins (all cast members are called by their real names) is asked to give a short synopsis of Shakespeare’s life. Resorting to ChatGPT, Mullins’ biography quickly devolves into a tossed salad of historical references, including Shakespeare’s delivery of the Emancipation Proclamation.

The key to the production’s success is the propulsive pacing; this is the kind of production where jokes are so abundant and come so quickly the audience is perpetually in danger of missing a funny bit because they’re still laughing at the last one.

The show starts modestly enough as Sydnee S. Graves, acting as our guide for the night, introduces the basic premise. With the help of renowned Shakespeare scholar, Rachel Marrs, they have accepted the challenge of presenting all of the Bard’s works in less than two hours.

After enlisting Mullins in a bit of faux audience participation, they start with “Romeo and Juliet,” with a super-suave Graves wooing a very reluctant Mullins. When that one play takes 12 minutes to perform, they realize the true enormity of their challenge and we’re off to the races.

“Othello” is transformed into a rap song, all of the histories captured by a football game and all the comedies layered into one big slice of wackiness called “The Love Boat Goes to Verona.”

Mullins gets the hardest workout of the night, regularly running through scenes or frantically juggling costumes and wigs. While a lot of comic hay is made of his character’s penchant for incorporating projectile vomiting into as many death scenes as possible, some of his best bits are small comic grace notes, like his curt dismissal of his imaginary horse in one scene.

As not-really-an-expert on the subject, Marrs projects a delightful Nutty Professor-like vibe, making bits like her delivery of “Titus Andronicus” as a cooking show a particular treat. Graves often acts as the master of ceremonies and, given how madcap the proceedings get, she is often endearingly exasperated and humorously overwhelmed.

While this is a supremely nonsensical show, all of the cast members have prodigious acting chops. So when things slow down enough for a semi-serious tag-team rendering of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy from “Hamlet,” the results are surprisingly potent.

In addition to keeping the pace popping, director Pabst deserves an additional shout-out for a sound design that regularly injects humor into scenes, like his potent use of the “Game of Thrones” theme.

Anyone afraid that “Complete Works” is a sort of greatest hits album of Elizabethan drama can rest assured. This thoroughly satisfying comedy uses only the bare minimum of Shakespeare’s words to create a hilarious hodge-podge of captivating mayhem.

The rest of the technical elements seem streamlined to facilitate speed, Anna Bialkowski’s costumes often being thrown on and tossed off within a matter of seconds, for instance.

Anyone afraid that “Complete Works” is a sort of greatest hits album of Elizabethan drama can rest assured. This thoroughly satisfying comedy uses only the bare minimum of Shakespeare’s words to create a hilarious hodge-podge of captivating mayhem.

You may actually learn some things along the way, as well; I didn’t know that there are a combined 1,222 character roles in all of Shakespeare’s works, for example. But don’t let a little learning get in the way of what is primarily a raucous good time.

Richmond Shakespeare’s “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)” is playing on the Gottwald Stage at the Dominion Energy Center, 600 East Grace St, through March 30. Tickets and information available at https://richmondshakespeare.org/.