(L to R): Melissa Paladino (E-V), Elena Chang (Mikah Monoch), Maureen Sebastian (J’an Jah), and Temar Underwood (General Dan’h Madrin). Photo by Jim Baldassare

Theater geeks, comic book nerds and Sci-Fi aficionados, alert! You’ve got one week left to blast into a hyperspace of dorky delights: Fight Girl Battle World, a lighthearted romp through your favorite genres by the boisterous Vampire Cowboys theater group. The photo above speaks volumes about the breezy production, which smartly uses low-fi aesthetics to its campy advantage, relying on pure theatrical ingenuity to stage spectacular star fighter dogfights and zero gravity spacewalks.

The story is set in a time of intergalactic war, with a renegade General Dan’h leading a few ragtag rebels against the oppressive alliance he once served. One of his duties was exterminating the human race, a species reviled for, among other things, their storied appetite for babies. Now trying to make amends, Dan’h attempts to deliver the last human female, E-V, a tough-as-nails prize fighter on Battle World, to the last male, Adon-Ra, who is busy trying to assassinate the president of the alliance. You know the drill; it’s an epic adventure of interstellar importance, but made unique with elaborately choreographed fight sequences; farcical, Benny Hill-esque chase scenes; outlandishly lo-fi costumes; surprising puppetry; and laughs shaken out of a script that never takes itself seriously for half a ‘macrobrek.’

That said, the 95 minute production feels unnecessarily long; the show would be more fun at an hour and change, and playwright/fight director Qui Nguyen’s occasionally verbose and clunky dialogue could use some surgery. But thankfully he’s smart enough not to turn the evening into a derivative game of referential comedy – I only caught one direct allusion to a Sci-Fi flick: a well-placed nod to Han Solo and Leia’s famous “I love you”/“I know” exchange in Empire. Fight Girl Battle World exists as its own fresh entity; a whimsical new addition to the genre with enough theatrical special effects to make George Lucas seriously reconsider his obscene ILM budget.

Fight Girl Battle World continues at Center Stage, NY [48 W. 21st St.] through March 30th. Tickets cost $18.