Air travel can be mundane or even malicious, as evidenced by recent news of diverted flights and unruly passengers. But the Chicago-based dance theater company Lucky Plush Productions has turned a situation most people dread into an amusing and energizing experience with “The Queue,” the first performance in the new season of onStage at Connecticut College, on Saturday, Sept. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in Palmer Auditorium.

The characters in “The Queue” are in line at a fictional international airport, where they mix melancholy and morbid ideas about life and death with slapstick, vaudeville and Busby Berkeley-style choreography to create a comedic and moving production of dance and theater. The central narrative comes from “A Will and No Will, or a Bone for the Lawyers,” a 1946 farcical play in which a man’s impending death creates chaos as other characters evaluate their roles in his life and lobby for inheritances. “The Queue” has been compared to the physical humor of Charlie Chaplain and the rhythm and timing of Jacques Tati.

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” said Rob Richter, director of arts programming at Connecticut College, “funny but forlorn, a mix of theater and dance, and all in such a banal setting. This truly is a performance that will have wide-ranging appeal.”

This presentation of “The Queue” by Lucky Plush Productions was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Tickets for the event are $24; $21 for seniors; and $12 for students. For tickets and information, call 860-439-2787 or visit onstage.conncoll.edu.