Where’s Waldo? At the fuse box

Imagine a “Honeymooners” episode in which Ed Norton channels the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and you’ve got the gist of “Call Me Waldo.”

In Rob Ackerman’s whimsical new comedy, best friends Gus and Lee are electricians who’ve just landed a lucrative job wiring up a Long Island synagogue. Things go well until the normally mild-mannered Lee (Matthew Boston) begins going into trances and spouting out ponderous declarations about individualism and self-reliance.

Turns out he’s been taken over by Emerson, the “Sage of Concord” himself. This naturally leads to complications beyond electrical wiring, especially when one of Lee’s impromptu speeches becomes a YouTube sensation.

There’s other fallout, as well: Lee’s wife, Sarah (Rita Rehn), finds herself excited by this 19th-century visitor to her bed and starts playing her own version of “Where’s Waldo?”

“He sounded better, actually,” she confides to her friend Cynthia, a doctor. “Looked better, too. More manly.” Cynthia, however, is worried about Sarah’s new infatuation. “You’ve been seduced by aphorisms,” she warns.

The play lacks the wonderful specificity of “Tabletop,” Ackerman’s hilarious 2001 comedy about the making of a television commercial that drew on knowledge accrued from his day job as prop master at “Saturday Night Live.”

But “Call Me Waldo” offers some genuine laughs, especially with its subplot involving the improbable romance between the vulgar, blue-collar Gus (the boisterously funny Brian Dykstra) and the refined Cynthia (Jennifer Dorr White).

Even if it doesn’t really build much on its imaginative premise, “Call Me Waldo,” directed with just the right lightness by Margarett Perry, makes for an engaging 95 minutes.