To be successful, Keith Reddin's Brutality of Fact requires a director and actors who can unite the play's frequent stylistic and tonal shifts into a cohesive whole.
The play's multifaceted nature becomes apparent in its first scene, a lunch between Jackie and Maggie, long-estranged sisters. Reddin combines Jackie's news that their sister Janet has died and their mother, Val, has moved in with her with something slightly ludicrous: Jackie's been telling their mother that Maggie, too, is dead. While Amy Da Luz manages to generate laughs by delivering Jackie's news with unusual placidity (Jackie is, after all, a Jehovah's Witness), Donna Robinson flounders as the "straight man" in the scene.
Similarly, while Joy Franz offers an emotionally grounded performance as Val, she is rarely lunatic enough when playing this frustrated spitfire. Val's joie de vivre causes consternation not only to Jackie but also to Jackie's coldly manipulative attorney, romantic interest, and fellow Jehovah's Witness, Chris (woodenly played by Marshall Correro).
Alongside this intricate portrait of family dysfunction are dream sequences and other diversions (a lesbian whom Maggie meets in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting keeps appearing, seemingly at random). Director Stephanie Yankwitt has given Brutality of Fact an earnest, naturalistic staging that works well enough in some scenes but diminishes the more fantastic and absurdist ones.
Navigating the play's quixotic tones well are D.H. Johnson as Jackie's ex-husband, who happens to bed Maggie, and Bronwen Coleman as the goodhearted lesbian in Maggie's life. Also notable are Melissa Ross, who plays both the recently deceased Janet and Maggie's demanding boss, and Paris Yates as Jackie's preteen daughter.
Joe Powell's ingeniously flexible realistic scenic design serves the play's multiple locations well and is beautifully contrasted by Jamie Carter's childlike drawings, which are projected before each scene. Here whimsy and reality mix perfectly.
Presented by the Cardinal Group, Jeffrey Schulman, and Robin Mishik-Jett at Urban Stages, 259 W. 30th St., NYC. Aug. 20-Sept. 10. Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. (212) 868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.