Three years ago Clay Allen Duke, an out-of-work ex-con whose benefits had run out, rose in the middle of a Panama City, Florida school board meeting and threatened and shot at several board members before killing himself. Local television cameras caught the event and it was viewed widely.

Choreographer Dayna Hanson takes that story to On The Boards (through Sunday) and opens it to inquiry through dance, but also song, and speech. In this much this On The Boards commission is effectively a musical, but The Clay Duke isn’t serving anything obvious. Obfuscation, digression, and solipsism are the order of the day (as ever) but for most of its running time The Clay Duke is unabashedly entertaining.

This is the kind of show that takes a break to talk about itself. Performers break out of character to discuss their personal feelings about the proceedings. Characters are caught, and confess to, riffing on Chekhov. Scenes are repeated in variation. In such a context breaking into song or dance (and it is either one or the other but not both) feels at home, if not natural. There is none of the traditional musical’s strain to excuse the song and dance breaks.

Perhaps the strongest abstraction in the production is the doubling of the antagonist. An initial solo introduces us to Duke in the person of Thomas Graves, co-producing artistic director of the Rude Mechanicals. Graves ranges around the space laughing with a maniacal lack of spontaneity. Soon he is joined by longtime Seattle dancer and teacher Wade Madsen as a second Duke.

These Dukes consult with and comfort one another. In refracting this almost-mass shooter Hanson opens space for the myriad questions these events leave behind. Of course there are no answers despite some scenes that dabble in the human propensity for violent rage. The closest we come to an answer is a sense that we’ve had a very personal encounter with people as flawed and complicated as ourselves.

Hanson dissects Duke’s life and displays the parts, often chopped up by stuttering dance music and reiterated scenes. The odd bits rise to the surface with references to his massage therapist license and an in-depth exploration of a handbag used in an attempt to disarm Duke.

While there isn’t a weak note in the cast Seattle stalwart Sarah Rudinoff threatens to steal the show numerous times. Whether reenacting Superintendent Bill Husfelt’s negotiations with Clay Duke, razzle-dazzling through the dance sequences, or in her big 11th-hour ballad Rudinoff is never less than winning. Often she leaves the audience stunned.

The songs, by Hanson, Henry and Linus Mumford, and Dave Proscia, may not inspire dance but they achieve the fine balance between the clarity of musical theatre and the clutter of pop. The dance music is driving and disrupted, suggesting Duke’s mental state while the choreography lifts the oppressively banal world of Panama Beach with its many moustaches and white pantsuits to joyful heights.

For all its violence and self-involvement The Clay Duke produces joy; one might even call it a holiday show. With its fake Christmas tree adorned set and the deep empathy one feels in leaving the theatre one could do worse for holiday cheer.