In the first scene of American playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Wonder of the World,” Cass, the main character, introduces the play’s central plot when she explains to her husband, Kip, that she’s made a huge mistake in life. She asks him, rhetorically, “Do you remember that time you proposed and I said, ‘yes’?”

“Wonder of the World,” this year’s opening production for the John Wright Theatre, tells the tale of a woman who leaves her husband — seemingly stifled and conflicted by a secret he has kept from her — and boards a bus to Niagara Falls in search for meaning and guidance.

Director Brad Myers’ adaptation of the comedy opened Friday. The production will continue playing through Oct. 13 at the theatre.

“We often like to kick off our season with a comedy, just kind of a more festive sort of start,” Myers said.

Myers said Lindsay-Abaire is a playwright that is “very hot right now.” Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole” won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007. His most recent production, “Good People,” is currently the most-produced play in the country, according to The Theatre Communications Group, the industry’s largest trade group.

“I think he’s a very funny writer. And yet, there’s some serious issues that he deals with as well,” Myers said.

“I’ve been dying to do one of his plays, and I thought this particular one suited the acting pool that I knew we would have this fall.”

Senior theater arts major Elisa Alpizar stars as Cass, an optimistic woman who ventures off to Niagara Falls with nothing but a suitcase and a bucket list consisting of wearing velvet, talking to a stranger and wearing a wig.

“There’s something kind of childlike and naive and optimistic about Cass ”” and I think Elisa really has those qualities,” Myers said. “She’s also very, very bright. That’s a nice combination.

“You could get an actor who’s just going to mock the character, and I didn’t want that. I wanted someone who really understood her and would advocate her.”

Alongside Alpizar’s Cass is Lois, played by Aubrianne Scott, a sophomore theater arts major. Scott plays a suicidal and jilted alcoholic who befriends Cass, begrudgingly, at first, on her journey to Niagara Falls.

Scott’s character ”” depressed and careless ”” is as much the antithesis of the peppy Cass as she is her own catalyst for comic relief.

“Getting to know Lois and trying to be in her brain was a little bit harder because I’m not an alcoholic,” Scott said.

“The certain things that she would say I didn’t quite understand until the last couple weeks of rehearsal. Even though (her lines are) raunchy, she doesn’t have any censors. She just says whatever she wants because she’s going to kill herself, so why not?

“She’s hilarious. Hilarious.”

The play features nine different settings and locations ”” such as a hotel room, two airborne helicopters and three themed restaurants””that span two acts. The play, for the most part, is based in a hotel room near Niagara Falls.

“I think a big challenge is the fact that there are so many locations,” Myers said.

“There are a lot of plays that are set in one location, and you build that set and you don’t have to do any shifts or transitions.”

Myers said one of the difficulties of having many set changes in this play is figuring out the logistics of the quick transitions between different scenes, such as between a bedroom in the first scene to a hotel room.

The production also features a cast that had to undergo drastic makeovers for its respective roles ”” from a financially impaired elderly couple, odd-jobbing as shoe shiners and private investigators, to a clown doubling as a relationship counselor.

“To be honest, that’s the final stage that you go through as an actor,” said Jochebed Smith, who plays Janie, the clown counselor.

“You go through all of the rehearsals and memorize all of your lines, but finally getting into character gets real when you get into hair and makeup.”

The comedy — featuring a wit-heavy script that references decapitated Barbie dolls, Costco bulk brands of peanut butter and Donkey Kong-sized barrels””is also a play that delves into the serious theme of finding the meaning of life, Myers said.

“It’s what I call an absurdist play masked as a comedy,” Myers said.

“Are there signs in life, meaningful events that are telling us something about the life that we’re living? ”” That’s what Cass is after. She believes in those signs. She believes in destiny. She believes in fate, as opposed to an absurdist point of view that there is no meaning in life. That’s her search.”