Background characters essayed by day players. Casts of thousands. Movies are crawlin’ with ’em. Nobody much cared about the usually unnamed souls who were rarely part of the plot, and they still don’t. But Puffs, a boy-wizard spoof subtitled Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic & Magic, shines a spotlight on them (without casting “lumos,” because that’s a proprietary spell).

Director Michael Callahan is credited as writer, but as he explained before Saturday’s opening performance, the script evolved with a workshop-style model, with the whole cast participating in the writing. That’s likely why this production is one of the funniest season-enders I’ve seen.

While many children attended on opening night, I hardly heard a peep from them during the show – it was the over-25 crowd who were clapping and screaming upon each first entrance of these beloved characters from the underwater city of Bikini Bottom.