Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake)

The idiomatic fusion of gravitas and whimsy that distinguishes playwright Sheila Callaghan's oeuvre crystallized in her breakthrough play about the extremes to which grief can drive the bereaved. Director Jeremy Aluma's smartly appointed staging hits the externals, yet lapses in casting and tone impede its deepest potential.

First seen in 2005 at EdgeFest, the post-Ionesco narrative carries a wacky charm that masks roiling pain. It's Christmas, one year after Mother (Carrie Keranen) and 11-year-old Janice (Kate Wronowski) lost Father (John Halbach)—first seen in silhouette behind designer Staci Walters' witty set—to a holiday accident best left unrevealed. Barbara (Alyssa Preston), Mother's childless sibling, reaches out to her manically cooking sister and eerily morbid niece but gets more feedback from her army of cats. Critically, a third mourner inhabits this scenario: the anthropomorphic Apartment (Brendan Hunt), who witnesses, aids, and intrudes on Mother and Janice's polarized relationship and erratic behavior—ultra-esoteric recipes from Mother, an ominous gift list from Janice—and two famous fantasy figures (Halbach) who channel Dad.

It's a singularly original, deceptively oddball property. On surface levels, director Aluma's execution reflects this: Hunt appearing from the décor in ever more surprising ways, Halbach's surrogate figures ascending into the flies, unexpected plaster and wallpaper disarray crumbling from Walters' scenic wonder. Douglas Gabrielle's lighting plot, Christy Hauptman's costume parade, and Daniel Hoal's sound design have wide-ranging effects to achieve, which they do with aplomb.

Hunt, his deadpan charged, makes a slyly proficient Apartment, and Halbach exhibits considerable subtlety in his incognitos, created with seamlessly segueing voice and expressions. Wronowski imbues Janice with unmannered stillness and edge, withstanding memories of indelible originator Lily Holleman, and she and Keranen look related.

However, the profound depths beneath Mother's hyperactivity are rarely detectable in Keranen's valiantly chipper attack. She hardly seems related to the miscast Preston, whose obviated character-actress cutes as Barbara deflate the role's ironies. This is the production's real problem: Aluma nails the foundational structure, but the nuances of the play's seriocomic wiring only register in bisected segments, with the final masterstroke here almost perfunctory. Even so, "Crumble" remains a striking, uniquely affecting work. That may well suffice for fans of author and company.

Presented by and at Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Dr., L.A. Nov. 11-Dec. 18. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m. (Also Sun., 7 p.m., Dec. 18.) (310) 281-8337. www.sacredfools.org.