If you think Fly Me to the Moon is a swinging ’60s ballad, you’re getting close, but if you guess it’s a winning black comedy by Northern Irish playwright Marie Jones about a race horse aptly named after the song — and you add two female caretakers who find that the old man in their charge holds the winning lottery ticket — you’re on the money. Did I mention that he died on their shift on the winning day?

It would be difficult to find a funnier, more mismatched duo of female clowns currently appearing off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters than Katie Tumelty and Tara Lynne O’Neill. Besides being endowed with a natural, unbridled flair for the absurd, these actresses are further endowed with the words and directorial wizardry of Jones. Jones gained her rightful place in the playwrights’ pantheon for her play Stones in His Pockets. I don’t know if this same award-winning Olivier and Tony-nominated leprechaun was spoon-fed on the comic genius of Lucille Ball and her sidekick Ethel Mertz from the ’50s I Love Lucy TV show, but she might as well have been. But make no mistake. This is not just one hour and 40 minutes of non-stop on-stage hilarity save one intermission, but a poignant glimpse into the psyches of two middle-aged cash-strapped caretakers.

Enter Loretta into her own spotlight downstage. She states that what she’s about to tell us is “the god honest truth.” We believe her. As O’Neill plays her, we couldn’t do otherwise. She’s a stalwart full-figured kind of gal, with a pretty moon-face to top off the package. It’s a rainy Monday and the “whole house is in a bad mood.” Even the dog had his head in his paws. She’s late for work because of her son’s school troubles and it’s “only the beginning of a bad day.”

Enter Frances at the other end of the stage. She’s a wary, sparrow-like kind of woman. She talks to us in a rapid-fire delivery like an intimate acquaintance. But should we trust her? The way that Tumelty plays her, she walks a high wire with no net to catch her. Maybe if she’d waited for Loretta to show up, old man Davy wouldn’t have fallen in the bathroom: “Maybe if I had waited, maybe if it hadn’t been rainin,’ but I didn’t and it was.” Old man Davy, she tells us, was desperate to go to the toilet, “What could I do? He was 84.”

Lights come up on a spare room. Its Davy’s living quarters. A disheveled bed, a side table with pills, a breakfast tray, a wheelchair that Frances has apportioned for her stiff back and a closed door complete the picture. But wait. Where’s Davy? We’re quick to be informed he’s behind the door, but we’ll never meet him or his corpse. In short order, Loretta investigates (Frances “doesn’t do death”) and finds him dead.

It’s hard to define why a dead man in the bathroom and two hysterical caseworkers trying to get a handle on this unwieldy situation is so unremittingly funny but in Jones’ script, it most decidedly is. It’s also a morality tale that pulls us into the playwright’s clutches and makes it our moral dilemma as well. Maybe if it were up to Loretta alone, she’d call in the doctor and the whole business would be done with. But she’s not alone, and as Frances is quick to advise her, Monday’s the day that Loretta picks up his pension from the ATM machine. If she doesn’t retrieve it on the same day, the government will gladly take it back. One hundred and twenty quid split between the two is nothing to sneeze at in a world where husbands are laid off for little reason and their wives clean up an old man’s waste for six quid an hour.

Still, Loretta is a nice Catholic girl and rewards are supposed to pile up in heaven, after all. Besides, it’s dishonest, isn’t it — even if the man’s not alive to spend it? “The ATM doesn’t know it,” Frances reminds her. The plot twists tumble forth, one upon another, and when Frances further discovers a winning lottery ticket with Davey’s pick on a horse that shares the name of one of Frank Sinatra’s old tunes, it looks like the devil has won the day. The fact that the lopsided, disjointed rationale of these two dames keeps us glued to our seats is due largely to the fast-paced, ping-ponging directorial choices Jones makes. When the duo step outside the scene into their downstage limbo to address us directly and then dive back into the reality of their squalid room — which happens often in this script — the transition is seamless. It’s the same daffy Loretta and Frances, whatever the theatrical conventions may be.

With that said, the same authenticity that engenders our trust in the performances can put an American audience in a “wee” bit of a tangle. The thick brogue is often served up so speedily, especially with so many high points of hysteria, we’re in danger of losing the sense (or nonsense) of a particular line. One feels that the actresses are having such a good time sharing their predicament with us that elocution is not at the top of the list. Happily, the situation translates readily enough in the slump of a shoulder, a sudden collapse, or the wide-eyed incomprehension of their circumstances that we get the point. But a little vocal adjustment here and there for the non-Irish among us would be of help.

Niall Rea’s set design is well-suited to a modest-sized proscenium. Old man Davy’s room is saved from the claustrophobic feel of a box set by wing extensions that lead the players to the bathroom hallway on one side and to an outside exit on the other end. This allows for surprisingly fluid movement as our two performers fly in and out of their ever-tightening predicament. His lighting as well serves the quick transitions required when the performers slip in and out to confront us directly.

The sound mixing is another matter altogether. We discover soon enough that Davy had an equal fondness for Frank Sinatra as well as his racing sheets, and we can all appreciate the serendipity of a winning horse named Fly Me to the Moon. But the constant blaring of Frank’s renditions of everything from “The Girl from Ipanema” to “The Lady Is A Tramp” in between each scene is more a distraction than a help. One place where such insertions do work is during intermission when the lyrics of “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” come through loud and clear. When we hear Frank singing “there may be trouble ahead,” we don’t doubt it.

Peter Tear, executive producer, and Elysabeth Kleinhans, artistic director of 59E59 Theaters, can be congratulated for bringing Green Shoot Productions, with the support of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, to our shores. This production is part of on an ongoing first Irish series at 59E59 Theaters, and with such a stellar cast and script by Marie Jones, we can expect many more theatrical flights to the moon and beyond.

(“Fly Me to the Moon,” will be performed in a limited run through September 30th at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022. For tickets call 212-279-4200 or visit http://www.59e59.org.)

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