Lake Placid High School students Marley Levinson, left, and John Bronwell rehearse Tuesday night. (Enterprise photo — Griffin Kelly)

LAKE PLACID — Sketch comedy isn’t just reserved for TV shows like “Saturday Night Live” and “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson.”

Lake Placid Middle-High School students will perform Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor” Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. The play is a comedic and sometimes musical anthology of vignettes based on short stories by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov.

The narrator of the play suffers from writer’s block and begins to rattle off stories to the audience. In one, a young bachelor exhibits how he is the best at seducing married women. In another, a government clerk has a mental collapse after accidentally sneezing on a general during a night out at the opera. Later, two lovers sit on a park bench, singing about how they adore each other so much but keep putting off any commitments till the next day.

The stories all come together to show just how ridiculous the human mind can be.

“It’s Neil Simon, but it’s also Chekhov. It can be a little difficult for the kids, but I like to challenge them,” said Brenden Gotham, director and school English teacher. “It’s not a campy comedy. It can be highbrow comedy at times. It’s funny, you should still come see it, but it is a different comedy style.”

Gotham said he chose the play after Kent Streed at Pendragon Theatre in Saranac Lake suggested he produce a series of one-acts. Gotham also wanted to have his students learn about Simon and Chekhov and their importance to the theater.

“I haven’t done one-acts and vignettes in nearly 10 years,” he said. “It was nice to have each kid have their own story to tell. The original script calls for four actors to play every role, but a lot of high schools and colleges break up the parts. With the vignettes, every actor is so important and vital to the scene. Sometimes as a tertiary character you miss out on some of the aspects you would get as a lead character. Every kid is a lead in this, so I love that.”

Junior Anders Stanton plays the narrator. He’s never named, but the character is most likely Chekhov himself. He said he hasn’t read any Chekhov, but he’d like to start. He said he enjoys the more one-act, sketch-based format of “The Good Doctor.”

“I like the vignette style because it gives some of the actors a chance to play more than one part,” he said. “For myself, I turn into a seducer at one point. It’s a style that opens up for casting but the vignettes are also for the audience. It gives them a nice break in between each one.”