Having a minor character lug a kitchen sink into an ensemble scene near the end of the play is a clever touch. It shows that director Paul Mitri is both self-aware and self-deprecating about "The Servant of Many Masters."

But it doesn't explain why he allowed this adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's original 18th-century farce to evolve into a nearly unmanageable three-hour opus.

In Goldoni's "A Servant of Two Masters," the central character of Truffaldino (Jordan Savusa) hires himself out to two employers, hoping to get some extra meals and pay. Comic confusion results when he misroutes letters and money intended only for "your master."

The background action includes thwarted lovers, cross-gender disguises and generic scheming, drawing heavily on the Italian commedia dell'arte, which features stock characters, masks, set routines and improvisation that could include topical satire.

It's from the ingredient of topical satire that Mitri takes his inspiration, also crediting Lulie El-Ashry, Kyle Klapatauskas and the full company with this adaptation. But the resulting broth suggests that collaboration may have involved too many cooks.

The approach stages the play within a play, with a beleaguered university cast and crew preparing to stage the Goldoni work on a shoestring, to an unexpected audience of university contributors.

Mitri's satiric thesis is that the university (and specifically its theater department) is subject to too many masters who expect too much and support too little.

It would be easy to identify several of those "masters," but Mitri rolls them all into a single undefined persona who speaks no lines but repeatedly whispers unheard instructions to the character in charge of the Goldoni production.

It's an intriguing premise that never gets fully developed, leaving one wishing that Mitri would have picked a single horse to ride.

Several elements work well, however. The opening sequence is fun to watch, transforming a cavernous bare stage into a workable set by flying in curtains, rolling out props and adding a simple backdrop.

Savusa does an excellent job as both Truffaldino and the student actor who plays him, getting the expected good laugh by explaining why he can't do a scene in pidgin ("I went to private school.") His best scene may be the dinner he serves to both masters simultaneously while preserving the illusion that each has a private servant.

But mini trampolines that allow characters to bounce into their entrances, dueling banjos, and references to Honolulu's mayor bring us full circle back to the kitchen sink. The show's three-hour running time would be improved by deciding what the production wants to say and by editing out all the material that doesn't say it.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater performances in Hawai'i since 1973.