Laughter blooms prodigiously in Native Gardens at the Rep

For the first 80-plus minutes of Native Gardens, only discord blooms. Well, that and a bumper crop of hilarity.

(Spoiler alert: The puns only get worse, or at least more prevalent, from here.)

In Karen Zacarias’ wicked comedy, which opened Friday night at Little Rock’s Arkansas Repertory Theatre, the initial outlook is rosy, so to speak.

Pablo Del Valle (Gabriel Pena), a young lawyer looking to rise in his distinguished old firm, and his wife, very pregnant doctoral candidate Tania Del Valle (Aurora Leonard), buy a Washington, D.C., fixer-upper next door to Frank and Virginia Butley (Kurt Zischke and Rachel Harker), a staid and solid couple with a prize-worthy English garden over which Frank has been slaving for years.

Shortly thereafter, increasingly thorny clashes start to sprout, emerging first in a difference in gardening philosophies — Tania believes in a much less organized plot full of native plants to feed the bees and bugs Frank has been spraying against — and eventually develop into a whole bed of conflicts, generational, racial and even (mildly) political.

Then it turns out that the Del Valle-Butley property line doesn’t exactly conform to the existing chain-link divider, which raises taking a fence to new heights; as a result, turning what started out as well-intentioned neighbors into feuding enemies. Will they be able to find common ground before things get really wild and completely out of hand?

All four principals are a joy to watch, with performances that balance really nicely and are always fully in control even as the characters stray toward, but never cross, the borders of farce. Two supernumeraries, filling the scripted roles of landscape workers, city officials and yes, even a nanny of sorts, do their best to upstage them just a bit. Steve Broadnax III’s direction is spot on.

Mike Nichols’ set, dressed fantastically by Linda Kwallek, is a character in and of itself, even before the “curtain” rises. Extra praise is due for the soundtrack featuring at first music that stresses neighborliness and friendship and expands into a wide range of colorful but appropriate tunes.

Native Gardens continues to “soil” the Rep stage, 7 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through May 5 at the Rep, 601 Main St.

Ticket information is available by calling (501) 3780405 or online at therep.org.