Articulate plays about the universal family struggle to communicate.

It’s a world in which children have nicknames like Pookie and Jigger. The talk is of business, country clubs, boarding schools and the indispensability of servants.

Manners are the grease of society and frank conversation is discouraged lest it produce a squeak. Parents try desperately to instill their values in their children. Heaven forbid that they should revolt and become something as unsettling as an artist. And then there are all those cocktails!

This is the world of upper-crust Lake Erie, New York, society that playwright A. R. Gurney turned into a theatrical phenomenon during the 1980s. Nine of his plays were produced in New York over a period of eight years. “Love Letters,” Gurney’s two-character reading with an ever-changing star cast, seems to have taken up permanent residence at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills.

The New Place Theatre Co. is bringing this world to the South Bay with a three-play “A. R. Gurney Festival” at the Norris Theatre for the Performing Arts in Rolling Hills Estates. It opens Wednesday at 8 p.m. with “The Cocktail Hour.”

Other attractions are “What I Did Last Summer,” which was Gurney’s first published play, and “The Dining Room.” The plays will be presented in repertory through March 24.

“Gurney has had so much success with ‘Love Letters’ and he is so prominent on the scene that this seemed appropriate,” said Mimi Wilson, a producing artistic director for New Place. “You’ll see your family,” said Marsha Kramer, an actress in the festival. “A lot hits home.”

The festival was designed to present early, middle and late Gurney, although the plays come out in opposite order at the Norris.

“The Cocktail Hour,” first staged in 1988, centers on a playwright’s visit to his parents. He has written a frank play about his father and wants permission to stage it. Needless to say, the father’s answer is no. A flow of liquor ensures a running spat in what director Tom Troupe calls “an articulate play about the universal family struggle to communicate.”

“The Dining Room,” produced in 1981, is a fanciful play focused on how people in Gurney’s world live out their relationships in a dining room--much of it having nothing to do with meals. The play covers several decades and six actors play 57 different characters of various ages.

Among the many vignettes, a woman uses the dining room to type her term paper and has an argument with her husband about becoming an independent person. A determined mother tries without success to influence her daughter. Two teen-age girls sneak a few drinks while waiting for their boyfriends.

Director Melanie Jones said the play is about “how manners are important” but, at the same time, about how they have declined. “Eating together is an accepted standard of behavior,” Jones said. “But there’s a scene at the end of the play when the mother says, ‘Now we stand up to eat; soon, we’ll be eating in the bathroom,’ ” she said.

The earliest Gurney play in the festival, “What I Did Last Summer,” was first produced in 1981 but written several years earlier. Set in a family’s summer home on Lake Erie, it is about a boy discovering his talent as an artist to the consternation of his mother.

“The play has a lot of themes about responsibility to self, society and family and more importantly, the origins of artistic responsibility,” said director Thomas Ashworth. It is performed as a memory play in which older actors go back in time and play the characters they were when they were younger. A discussion of Gurney’s works follows each performance of “What I Did Last Summer.”

The Gurney festival is a departure for the New Place company, which is starting its fifth season as the Norris’ resident professional theater group. In the past, the group did a four-play series. But New Place directors said candidly that limited funds, along with a $60,000 debt, ruled out a similar season this year.

“A festival is the best way,” said Bob Wright, who shares producing artistic director responsibilities with Wilson. “We can present three plays in repertory and use all backstage facilities and the actors doubling in multiple situations so that each play is less costly.”

Later this year, New Place will present “An Evening with Eddie Albert” and its popular “Shakespeare on the Meadow” at the South Coast Botanic Garden.

Meanwhile, the group hopes that the Gurney plays will attract the regular core of 1,200 subscribers, along with new theatergoers.

Said Wright, “He’s the hottest playwright in America next to Neil Simon. . . . He writes contemporary American family, social WASPish plays. That’s a lot of our audience in the South Bay.”

What: A. R. Gurney Festival.

Where: Norris Theatre for the Performing Arts, Crossfield Drive at Indian Peak Road, Rolling Hills Estates.

When: “The Cocktail Hour,” Wednesday, 8 p.m.; also March 14 and 15 at 8 p.m., March 24, 7 p.m.; “The Dining Room,” March 16, 2:30 and 8 p.m., March 19 and 20, 8 p.m.; “What I Did Last Summer,” March 21, 22, 8 p.m.; March 23, 2:30 and 8 p.m.

Admission: Series, $67.50; $60, seniors and students; single tickets, $24, $22.

Information: 544-0403.