With a name like the American Theater of Actors, it comes as no surprise that their “An Ideal Husband” succeeds because of its cast and despite its crew. Barely discernable in the gloom, with musical accompaniment that sounds like an unfortunate spoof, the plucky actors face the full disadvantages of off-off-Broadway production. But despite a director determined to steal their thunder (by underhanded use of comic sound effects) and a theater so dim people wouldn’t even talk in the lobby, the actors somehow give Oscar Wilde his due.

Lord Chiltern (Christian Kohn) enjoys a prime spot in the House of Commons, an earnestly worshipful wife (Christina Apathy), and a nearly forgotten dirty little secret. Namely, he’s a ripe sucker for a bit of blackmail. Plucking him is the rapacious Mrs. Cheveley (Carolyn Demerice), oozing with the sort of license a lady picks up “on the Continent.” When she shows up with an incriminating letter and starts to tear his citadel down brick by self-righteous brick, Chiltern must choose between disgrace and ghastly self-compromise. Thank heavens his good friend Lord Goring (Trevor St. John), the arch-alter ego for Wilde himself, has just enough dirt on his cuffs to know how to help him.

Wilde likes to hammer on one theme repeatedly, you can see it in “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” and, if you squint, “Salome.” And it is: Ladies, go easy on those husbands. In both “Husband” and “Fan,” an upstanding fellow comes perilously close to losing a wife when she notices his clay feet. In each, the silly gal has to accept that women’s lot is forgiveness, that blind trust and a warm bosom serve marriage far better than honesty and a hard head. Oscar, of course, had a lot to be forgiven, so he knew of what he spoke.

The company manages to disperse the ick-factor of this blithe misogyny by playing the Chilterns as, well, unbearable prigs. Ms. Apathy’s Lady Chiltern seems like a whining pill even before she gets on her moral high horse, and Mr. Kohn plays Robert as a stuffed moustache. Rather than serving as models for marriage, the Chilterns seem like lifelike, flawed fools, who have simply struck it lucky by finding each other. Lord knows, no one else could bear them. What gives the piece its delight is how Lord Goring, a bonmot distributor who sounds like a walking Bartlett’s, clearly adores them. Mr. St. John’s pitch-perfect (although occasionally inaudible) delivery convinces us that only a Chiltern of very great stature indeed could survive a friend so intent on cutting him down to size.

Director Robert Perillo has an ensemble cast comfortable with the text and one another. Why he then startles them out of their seats with Michelangelo Sosnowitz’s synthesized drumbeats boggles the mind. Let me be the first to make the generalization: He who has composed for the Jumbotron at Madison Square Garden should not be the man who scores a 19th-century aesthetic romp.

Mr. Perillo also has Something To Say, which he (literally) unveils in the final, crashing, bombastic chords of the evening. When the backdrop Union Jack falls to show us our very own Stars ‘n’ Stripes, we get his point. Apparently, in America politics go with scandal like pastrami goes with rye! Luckily, the truths the actors tell aren’t nearly so … ham-handed. They focus instead on tiny moments, on little exchanges of sincerity and affection that might otherwise vanish in Wilde’s acid sea. The pace stays high, the punchlines flow stylishly past, but the actors never stop the action to accept congratulations.

The Chilterns and Mr. St. John have pride of place on stage, and it is their natural, generous performances that carry the night. Though she glitters appropriately, Ms. Demerice’s vampy Mrs. Cheveley seems to owe more to Texas than Austria, and it’s more than most can do to out-shout the overacting butlers. Surprisingly, a secondary character, Lady Markby (Lynne McCollough), does what the mugging butlers could not. In a superfluous monologue, Ms. McCollough steals her scene by attacking her soliloquy like a very funny, asthmatic pit bull.

Better-funded efforts at Williamstown or on Broadway could have used costume designer Stephanie Voyer, doing more with a little than the big boys do with a lot. She wraps Ms. Demerice in slithery greens and golds, and swamps the ascetic Ms. Apathy in stiff cottons that accentuate her thinness. Occasionally, the grave suspicion that Oliver Parker’s 1999 film may have over influenced the production emerges – certainly Mrs. Cheveley’s hair is the same Julianne Moore-red, and Mr. St. John’s murmuring, lock-jawed delivery rings tellingly of Rupert Everett. But that version, star-packed and slick, doesn’t make a patch on this one.The stage may here be one step up from the gutter, but the folks on it are going to be stars.

Until September 17 (314 W. 54th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 212-769-8465).