New Village Arts’ Summer Comedy Festival consists mostly of playlets by David Ives. Maybe it should have consisted completely of Ives’ work.

His “Sure Thing” provides a sprightly opener in NVA’s off-night program of two one-acts. But the second, Emily Reit’s “Prom Night,” will be funny only to those who find the Three Stooges too subtle.

Reit’s targets are overprotective parents worried about their daughter’s prom date — a good choice for spoofery. But, although she might have hit that bull’s-eye with a rapier, she slashes it with a broadsword (emphasis on the “broad”).

Or maybe the idea to take the parents unbelievably over the top is director Ruff Yeager’s. Whether script or directing, the enterprise is laughable only in the wrong sense.

Yeager also plays the father, with Karson St. John, who’s currently more admirably on view in Vox Nova’s “The Waves” (apparently Thursday is her only night off), as the mother. They’re adorned in wigs and a Jannifer Mah costume design that seems to be from the ‘50s — he in smoking jacket and ascot, she in shirtwaist and apron — and the mom seeks answers to her questions from a Magic 8-Ball. Yet the two later bump fists.

Anachronisms, however, are minor woes compared to the puerile dialog, not credible and delivered as if triggered by someone pulling a string (Mom to prom date: “Will there be sex-u-al in-ter-course?”), all accompanied by the exaggerated and stilted movements of a Charlie Chaplin silent.

The point, apparently, is that the daughter has learned to cope and eventually does a sauce-for-the-goose turnabout on her interfering parents. A more appropriate revenge would likely involve homicide.

“Prom Night,” which was first developed in January at the Playwrights Project, might work better if the parents played it straight. Serious people saying ludicrous things can sometimes evoke chuckles, if not laughs. Cartoon characters who say silly things very soon, to adults, become tiresome.

“Sure Thing,” on the other hand, is a clever little skit illustrating how the right words can nurture or short-circuit a relationship. It’s one of the many playlets Ives can insert as a segment in his oft-staged sextet “Time Flies,” which — comprising six other offerings — is the main attraction of NVA’s summer festival.

Tanner Weston and Kristie Kahlweiss, who play the teen couple in “Prom Night,” here get to act more natural as two young persons first meeting at a coffee shop. She’s reading as he approaches her and asks if he may sit at her table. If he says the wrong words, there’s a beep, time reverts, and he gets to rephrase. For instance:

“What’re you reading?”

“The Sound and the Fury.”

“Oh. Hemingway.” (beep) “Faulkner.”

As the friendship grows, both get beeped regularly, and the humorous mistakes stir memories, in all of us, of those times when we wished we could go back and reword something we said. This “Sure Thing” (the phrase they repeatedly use as acceptance of the situation at that moment) also has a fun twist, thanks to director Kristianne Kurner and/or sound designer Adam Lansky. The small beeps evolve into a variety of sounds, with their length and tone depending on the seriousness of the gaffe.

Kurner also planned the ordinary dress and props for “Sure Thing.” Jungah Han created the living-room set, with its side coffee-shop table, and Matt Lescault-Wood handled the “Prom Night” sound design, which includes — no surprise — a fart cushion.

Cast and credits