It would be a serious understatement to say “The Servant of Two Masters” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre is a mixed bag of acting styles and musical styles, a spectacular blurring of the lines between 16th-century Italy and 21st-century America. That’s its appeal. Carlo Goldoni’s “The Servant of Two Masters,” written in 1743, is based on commedia dell’arte, which was an improvised art designed to entertain. What Goldoni did was take commedia characters and place them within a conventional script. And director Christopher Bayes has taken Constance Congdon’s adaptation of “Servant” to produce a modern take on Goldoni’s formula, using enough references to contemporary times to make it sound as though the actors are improvising.

The story centers on the traditional commedia figures: Truffaldino, the clumsy but faithful valet (Steven Epp); Brighella, an enterprising servant (Liam Craig); Smeraldina, a feisty servant girl (Liz Wisan); the old Pantalone (Allen Gilmore); the educated but ignorant Dottore (Don Darryl Rivera); and the lovers, Beatrice (Rachel Spencer Hewitt) and Florindo (Jesse J. Perez), Clarice (Danielle Brooks) and Silvio (Andy Grotelueschen).