burlesque

burlesque \ber-LESK\, adjective:

1. Involving ludicrous or mocking treatment of a solemn subject.
noun:
1. Any ludicrous parody or grotesque caricature.
2. A humorous and provocative stage show featuring slapstick humor, striptease acts, and a scantily clad female chorus.

Fast moving, wry and politely burlesque, The Finkler Question poses many questions.
-- Eileen Battersby, "Fast moving, wry and politely burlesque ,"The Irish Times, August, 2010.

He told himself that these words were ridiculous and part of the whole comic and burlesque, quality of the family, and yet he found now that he could not laugh at them.
-- Thomas Wolfe, Of time and the river: a legend of man's hunger in his youth

Burlesque comes from the Italian burlesco, "to jest."