AS a child, Kristine Nielsen enjoyed when her father was in pain.

   She wasn’t a malicious kid, you see, but her dad had this way of laughing so hard it hurt.

   ”Maybe that’s where my interest in comedy was, to watch my father laugh was always a great treat to me,” Ms. Nielsen says. “Because he had one of those silent laughs, but then he couldn’t move, he would be laughing so hard. And that would be a goal, ‘I want to make Dad laugh so he can’t move.’”

   These days the actress’ goal is to induce audiences into all kinds of guffaws during a run of Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer at McCarter Theatre in Princeton through Nov. 1. It’s an old play, dating back to 1773, but its set-up isn’t exactly high-minded. In fact, it’s classic farce.

   ”The characters should be very recognizable,” says Ms. Nielsen, who plays Mrs. Hardcastle. “There’s the ne’er-do-well son, the mother loves him, the mother spoils him, and the father would like him to straighten up and fly right. It’s all recognizable and I hope, as I said, that we communicate that and the audience has a good time with it.”

   In the play, Mr. Hardcastle arranges a meeting between his daughter, Kate (Jessica Stone), and Charles Marlow (played by Jon Patrick Walker), hoping it leads to a wedding. The problem is Charles — despite coming from a wealthy family — loses his nerves around aristocratic women, though he is perfectly comfortable around lower-class ladies. Despite all this, Kate thinks young Marlow sounds like a good catch, so she pretends to be a barmaid in order to win him over (hence, the play’s title).

   Things get even more complicated when Marlow and his traveling companion, George Hastings (Jeremy Webb), run into Tony Lumpkin (Mrs. Hardcastle’s son, played by Brooks Ashmanskas) at a bar during their journey. The Hardcastle estate is just up the road but the prankster Tony tells the travelers they are far off course. He then gives them directions to the Hardcastle home, but tells them it’s an inn (their only nearby option for an overnight stay) and that they should treat Hardcastle like a common innkeeper no matter how proper he behaves.

   Directing the production is Nicholas Martin, who earlier this year directed Ms. Nielsen in Christopher Durang’s Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them at the Public Theater in New York. His Broadway credits include Butley and Hedda Gabler, and he’s at the helm of a revival of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter starring Victor Garber that’s set to open next year.

   Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Martin first worked together about nine years ago. They’ve teamed up many times since, and Mr. Martin immediately thought of Ms. Nielsen in the role of Mrs. Hardcastle when he was asked to direct She Stoops at McCarter.

   ”I didn’t know it, oddly enough,” Mr. Martin says of the play. “And I read it, and seriously, right away I thought (of) Christine Nielson and Paxton Whitehead (as Mr. Hardcastle) in that opening scene of the two Hardcastles. And I thought, ‘Maybe I could call my friends and we’d all go to Princeton in the fall, and it would be easy and fun.’ Although theater is a business and never exactly fun, but it has been fun and actually exceeded my dreams for the show.”

   Mr. Martin’s relationship with McCarter dates to his childhood when his parents took him to shows there. He also made his professional debut playing Puck in a 1963 staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Princeton stage.

   For her part, Ms. Nielsen was excited to join her friend and take the role of Mrs. Hardcastle.

   ”What an actor always does, too, is you leap on the times when it can be fun,” she says. “So many times it’s a job and you try to make that fun of course. But when it is the kind of nut balls that Nicky Martin has put together, it’s like a camp it’s so much fun. We just hope we don’t get it wrong because we’re having so much fun.”

   ”I find everything she does is very moving or very hilarious,” he says. “Or both, hilarious is moving to me. And because I’ve sort of gotten through life... by finding the humor in anything in order to get through the darkest times. There’s a certain, I don’t want to call it desperation, but there’s a certain need to keep laughing that we share. And sometimes it’s very hard to direct Christine, for me, because whatever she does makes me delighted.”

   He expresses similar feelings for Mr. Ashmanskas.

   ”The gift of these two actors, among many, many other qualities, is that they can make you laugh at the absurdities of who we are without condescending to them or downplaying them,” he says. “And that to me is the essence of life and of art to a certain degree.”

   As much fun as they’re having, staging Goldsmith’s comedy is serious business. Despite the over-the-top nature of the play, keeping the characters and situation grounded is vital.

   ”All of (Mrs. Hardcastle’s) humor — and the humor, I hope, in the whole production — is based on reality and the possibility,” Ms. Nielsen says. “And the facts that extreme situations put you in positions of abandon where you lose your self-consciousness about who you are and surrender to the events.”

   Audiences can expect a faithful presentation of the play. Mr. Martin says it’s looking at the 18th century through a 21st century eye, but you won’t see things like a modern-dressed character walking onto the stage to comment on the action.

   ”I’m not an outré director in that sense,” he says. “I really like to do the play. I’ll put a spin on it but I like to do the play that’s written down, not some play in my own head. That’s an excuse to show off. It’s too exciting — and hard — to do the play that’s there without destroying it. And every actor in this play is somebody who honors that feeling.”

   In an era where Americans are facing such challenging times, can modern audiences can learn something about themselves, or the times we’re living in, while watching a play that’s 236 years old?

   ”You’re always asked when you do a revival about the relevance of the play and so frequently it’s made up,” Mr. Martin says. “The great plays, including the great comedies, are always relevant. Even if they’re examining a piece of society which no longer exists, the great plays will reflect something. If you look at Oscar Wilde today, that doesn’t really reflect anything that’s going on in this country at this time, but they’re the greatest, funniest plays ever written because of the characters and how they reflect who we are. That’s eternal.”

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  She Stoops to Conquer is at McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, through Nov. 1. Performances: Tues.-Thurs. 7:30 p.m., Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 3, 8 p.m., Sun. 2, 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $20-$60; 609-258-2787; www.mccarter.org