Devon Grice and Thomas Laitinen in a scene from “Quills” which continues Wednesdays and Sundays at the Ore Dock Brewing Co. until Oct. 30. (Riley Fields photo)

“How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate.”

So wrote the Marquis de Sade in “Les Prosperites du Vice” and thus perhaps predicted — in the uncannily prescient way of many of our great disrupter artists — the fiery and often-profound confection that is Director Jamie Weeder’s production of “Quills” (playing every Wednesday and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. through Oct. 30 upstairs at the Ore Dock Brewing Company).

Almost impossibly delightful, Weeder’s “Quills” finds that wonderful balance between droll profundity and exhilarating camp, while maintaining a relevant (but never dogmatic) element of social commentary. The Marquis de Sade’s violent institutionalization for his erotically expressive writings carries with it of course the timeless and inevitable theme of anti-censorship, but, in watching Weeder’s carefully modulated production, such a theme has rarely felt fresher.

As our news feeds are inundated with stories of inadequately equipped detention centers supposedly constructed for those who embody fictionalized “dangers” to the cruel status quo, college campus book-burning mobs, and the atrocious men in power who profit therefrom, one can’t help but glimpse “Quills” through the lens of a contemporary horror.

That’s not to say that this production belabors such points, or wears such an overt agenda on its sleeve, but “Quills” must be lauded for being this subtly evocative of our current moment, while also being so wonderfully transportive, and so much fun.

“Quills” somehow manages to offer its audience great theatrical escapism, while also interrogating the varied definitions of “transgressive,” and what it means to apply that term, and when, and to whom.

The upstairs space at the Ore Dock acts as the perfect set for this production, its stone walls, wayward beams, and low lantern light conjuring the dungeons of 19th-century France.

Given the layout of the space, the audience is essentially part of the stage, the actors roving among us, ever ratcheting up the thrilling intimacy. We viewers, in turn, are allowed to play the roles of the heavy-breathing voyeurs, fogging-up the windowpanes of the play. The uses of lighting effects and sound are simple, but effective. One particular scene, in which we see the Marquis de Sade’s head and torso illuminated in orange, and scrawled with his own cursive words, is a stand-out, a vision that wouldn’t seem out of place in one of Laurie Anderson’s avant garde concerts, or in the cinematic phantasmagoria of Guy Maddin.

The actors — sheathed in their eye-popping and billowy costumes — plunge uninhibitedly into this material and are a joy to behold. Devon Grice, as Madeline LeClerc, wonderfully braids coyness with vulnerability; Tanner Parrish, as Monsieur Prouix, epitomizes a laudanum-induced smarminess; as Renee Pelagie, Jessica “Red” Bays has mastered a booming and operatic comic timing; as the “atrocious men” overseeing the Marquis de Sade’s “treatment” (read: mutilation), Dr. Royer-Collard and Abbe de Coulmier, actors Jeff Spencer and Shane Vincent (respectively) prowl the stage, brilliantly evoking the increasing dysfunction between their presumably-platonic dominant-submissive dynamic.

And Thomas Laitinen, as the Marquis de Sade, is nothing short of a revelation, embodying the role in a way that had the audience hanging on his every word and gesture.

Recalling Tom Hulce’s Oscar-nominated turn as Mozart in the film “Amadeus” (1984), Laitinen relishes the utterance of every line, every insult, every twist of his mouth, every flourish of his … hands. His performance is naked and intense, but also subtle in many ways, hinting at the desperation and heartbreak that often nests in hilarity. The supporting actors — playing other members of the prison population — yelp and whoop from their shadowy cages, further conjuring the atmosphere of delicious nightmare.

We are very lucky indeed to have such a talented company in our town, and “Quills” is the sort of theatrical dream one wishes will long recur. It is not to be missed.