Teenagers can be prickly about entertainment aimed at them – either it’s sugar-coated condescension or instructive preaching, and no one likes to sit through that. So when two guys from Australia’s Zeal Theater show up to do a piece on responsibility, the stage seems set for the drier of the two unappealing options.

Luckily, Stefo Nantsou and Tom Lycos manage a tricky balance between what their audience will like (goofy clowning and electric-guitar jams) and what they need to hear (an even-handed discussion of juvenile culpability). The show does have some overly long stretches, signaled by the occasional shuffle and rustle from the audience. But by placing the action right up against the first row, and then frankly polling that row for its opinions, Mr. Nantsou and Mr. Lycos bust through the usual “seen-it-all” teen facade.

Based on actual events, “The Stones” follows two buddies, one 13, the other 15, who play a prank that kills a motorist. In 1994, while kicking rocks off an overpass, the boys watched as one stone shattered a windshield and the chest of the man behind it. Appearing before a children’s magistrate in Melbourne, the boys were eventually remanded to an adult court. The trial resulted in a hung jury, and the struggle over the verdict convulsed the nation. Should a 13-year-old be held accountable for murder? The actors themselves admit they still disagree about the answer – even after performing the piece for years and touring it around the world three times.

Acting as “theatrical journalists” more than playwrights, the creators based most of their work on an interview with a police detective assigned to the case. By alternately portraying the teens (Mr. Nantsou is particularly convincing as a slope-shouldered delinquent) and the cops who investigate them, the two men use a diverting show to illustrate the least attractive sides of human behavior. Seeing one boy bully the other comes as no surprise – but seeing adults conduct themselves in similar ways reminds us that even without sentences, we are all still jailed by our youth.

Relying heavily on Mr. Lycos’s astonishing acrobatic ability, the men use only a ladder and two sawhorses to create a bar, a prisoner’s dock, and a nightmare. When one of the children begins having dreams about his guilt, Mr. Lycos climbs up the ladder, wavering over the audience’s heads. It’s a sweaty-palm moment, when the dare-devilry of the actors seems just as frightening as the irresponsible boys they portray.

Fussy as they may be, children are the best audience for this show. The production does play broadly and skips the very legal arguments that adults might find most engaging. And in the spirited talkback discussion afterwards, it was the under-18s – and not their grandstanding parents – who asked most of the intelligent questions. By speaking candidly and unpretentiously to their listeners, Mr. Nantsou and Mr. Lycos elicit the same clear-eyed thinking in response. The raised hands and interested debate are their kudos, and the conversation continuing outside the theater? Their rave review.

***

Meanwhile, if you’ve only got an hour for your evening’s entertainment, and everything “tasteful” has begun to seem a bit bland, dash over to the Kraine Theater for “Goner,” Brian Parks’s sick little screwball comedy. Mr. Parks has packed a hundred pages of wacky, off-color jokes into breathless 60 minutes. It’s a good strategy – most of the lines are quotably funny, but those that aren’t pass faster than a plate of tikka masala.

This is disposable comedy, brilliant in the moment and too effervescent to take up mental space – the same sort of antidote to the workday as a beer chaser. Dr. Warren Wyandotte (David Calvitto) manages to be the least competent doctor at a hospital of complete idiots – at least some of his colleagues know chlamydia isn’t a character from Sophocles. Even so, none of them are much help when the wounded President shows up on their operating table. Dr. Southgate (a snappy Matt Oberg) only cares about developing Chemotherapy Barbie – a doll who whimpers when you pull her string, “I’m too young to die” – and Dr. Hoyt Schermerhorn (Jody Lambert) only has eyes for Wixim, Dr. Wyandotte’s daughter.

With the leader of the free world having brain surgery, the nervous FBI investigates everyone in the hospital. Wixim (Jona Tuck) hates her lab job assessing stool samples (“it’s like being a chef in reverse”) and has started making a documentary about her recent discovery: black people. This makes her appear dangerously left-leaning (“they came over in boats… like Toyotas!”), along with nearly everyone else. Apparently, just cooking with spices is enough to get you on a government watch list.

Mr. Parks believes in the “joke-persecond” theory, so cheap puns wrestle with savvier one-liners in every beat. Director John Clancy, one of the founders of the Fringe Festival, clearly realizes that sets and props would only clutter his stage; this is “poor theater” at its scrappiest. In fact, “Goner” seems very much the show that the Fringe Festival was founded for: satirical, bare-bones, and delighted with itself.

The show has made the festival rounds, so the cast has had plenty of time to ratchet up their delivery speed. The resulting pell-mell lets them get away with hilariously offensive comments; no line hangs long enough in the air to permit a gasp. And anyway, gasping might prevent us from hearing the next gag – and that’s the only sin these miscreants believe in.

“The Stones” until January 22 (229 W. 42nd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 212-239-6200).

“Goner” until January 28 (85 E. 4th Street, between Second and Third Avenues, 212-868-4444).