The award-nominated performance “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” is a musical coming to Ames on Wednesday.

Based on the 1988 MGM classic “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” with Steve Martin and Michael Caine, it first premiered in September 2004 before moving to Broadway in January 2005.

Set in the French Riviera, two con men are at the center of the production and meet on a train. It’s both a comedy and a musical that is critically acclaimed.

“It’s a sensational script. The music is stellar — the music and lyrics are very clever. It’s really hip and clever, without being coy. It’s full of laughter, it’s quite poignant at times and it’s very touching. The show has the ability to take an audience to one extreme to the other in a matter of moments,” said Brian McKay, who plays con man Lawrence Jameson.

Jameson talks women out of their money and Freddy Benson, played by Stephen Patterson, lies to women about a dying grandma to earn their compassion. They try working together, but decide that it’s unsuccessful and that the town is too small for the two of them. To figure out who should leave, they decide the first one to scheme $50,000 from local women gets to stay.

“It was a quirky sort of play that people weren’t really expecting,” said Tyler Soltis, company manager.

The lyrics and music were written by David Yazbeck, a two-time Tony award nominee and Grammy-nominated record producer.

“I think [Yazbeck] is good at writing funny songs. If you listen to a lot of the music, its very clever use of words that make it off the wall. I think someone else with this material won’t have done such a great job,” Soltis said.

Soltis said the show has been well received by college audiences.

“For some reason we have really appealed to the college crowd,” he said.

McKay said the tone of the lyrics adds to the appeal of the show.

“The addition of the music and lyrics is as skillful and tasteful as any amalgamation as I can think of. Doing this show is like drinking a Champaign cocktail, it’s really classy, it’s really elegant, but there both a great deal of fun” McKay said.

The performance comes to Stephens Auditorium on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. The show runs two hours, 30 minutes. Tickets are $47 for seniors, $43 for adults, $25 for youth and $20 for ISU students.