An Often Inspired Family Portrait

South Coast Repertory began the new century with Howard Korder’s “The Hollow Lands,” a sprawling 19th century saga of America’s costly westward trek. Now comes a world premiere by Richard Greenberg. In a key, style and rhythm all its own, it too concerns the westward-ho ethos and the bittersweet tenor of life in the warm, bright, smiling Western wilderness.

Meaning: Costa Mesa.

“Everett Beekin,” half of which is set in the County Orange, opened over the weekend in a first-rate production. In it, Greenberg bites the hand that commissions him on a happily regular basis. The results are not yet fully satisfying, but I loved a lot of it anyway, the way I loved Greenberg’s plangent and moving “Three Days of Rain” (1997).

So many playwrights are so plot-obsessed--oriented toward “individual beats” and “character arcs” and prospects for screenplay adaptation--that anyone of even moderate skill and subtler concerns tends to look good by comparison. Greenberg is another matter entirely. One of America’s sharpest and deepest wits in any medium, he’s interested in how his characters arrived at their present point of perplexity. Yet his plays aren’t plot-intensive. Greenberg tucks story points and expositional information deep inside a given character’s memory, or an anecdote, often on the off-beat.

When it works, the effect is lovely and very full--we enjoy the characters’ company and learn the things we need to learn about them, and their ancestors, in order to push the story forward. A neat trick. “Everett Beekin” hasn’t yet mastered it. Its two halves and two generations remain disconnected, and not only in the ways the playwright intended.

There’s so much else to enjoy, though, it’d be rather foolish to wait for the second production.

Act 1 plays like a Philip Barry redux of “Abie’s Irish Rose,” consciously old-fashioned. We’re in a Lower East Side tenement apartment in the late 1940s. Sophie (Kandis Chappell) and her recessive, harangued husband Jack (Jeff Allin) have come home for their weekly visit with Sophie’s steely widowed mother (Carole Goodman), as has Sophie’s sister Anna (Nike Doukas).

Claiming to be the victim of a summer cold, the third sister, Miri (Tessa Auberjonois), remains in her bedroom. Miri’s goy suitor comes to call. He is a promising-looking businessman named Jimmy Constant (Adam Scott). His unseen business partner--a symbol of American prosperity and American illusion--is Everett Beekin, who plans to relocate Jimmy--and Miri?--to Southern California to develop “analgesics and tranquilizers, chiefly, for which there’s an ever-growing market,” in Jimmy’s words.

For much of Greenberg’s first act, Sophie and Anna interrogate this handsome suitor. Greenberg has never written funnier dialogue. And there’s a quiet whammy in store just before intermission. Some in this family are destined to leave home; some aren’t.

The second act takes a generational jump, much as “Three Days of Rain” did. It’s now the late ‘90s, in Orange County. Nell (Doukas), the daughter of the first act’s Anna, has left the East Coast for menacingly sunny pastures. She leads tours of malls in order to fill the hours before the evening’s first cocktail.

“The Unity Bridge,” Nell’s spiel goes, “was erected in 1994 and given its name because, in spanning [Bristol Street, a block from South Coast Rep], it unites the forces of commerce, as represented by the mall, with the arts, as represented by the bank.”

Nell’s daughter Laurel (Auberjonois) is to marry the Jet Ski enthusiast Ev (Scott), whose full name is Everett Beekin, son of Everett Beekin VI (Allin), grandson of the character referred to in Act 1. (Greenberg lays out these crisscrossing family destinies pretty laboriously.) Nell’s sister Celia (Chappell), who stayed East, close to their mother, has come to Orange County for her niece’s wedding.

At heart, “Everett Beekin” concerns two generations of sisters. Is there a middle ground between too close and not close enough when it comes to family? What leads any siblings into a pattern of drift?

“Everett Beekin” requires some narrative housekeeping in Act 2. The fate of the unseen mother is dealt with awkwardly. The temporarily jilted Ev, a sun-drenched kid with “the brains of lawn furniture,” is a predictable straight-man (and improbable, fleeting romantic interest) for Aunt Celia. Key Act 2 monologues reveal a certain strain, especially the one Allin delivers regarding the emblematic and enigmatic Beekin, whose symbolic import never quite pays off.

Director Evan Yionoulis, a frequent and excellent Greenberg collaborator, has done all she can to un-snag these snags. She knows instinctively how little movement is required, when Greenberg’s words make the dance floor plenty lively on their own. The casting skews a little youngish, but the ensemble is strong, with Chappell, Doukas, Scott and Auberjonois especially accomplished in both acts. Chris Barreca’s twin settings--pale gray ‘40s tenement in Act 1, stylized plastic and neon landscapes in Act 2--could not be better.

In 1997, Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain” received its SCR world premiere. It had in it an extraneous fourth character later excised by Greenberg, before New York. Results: superb. Greenberg has more difficult and delicate revisions ahead of him with “Everett Beekin.” For now, we’ll settle for a frequently inspired and beautifully staged comedy whose undertow may yet exert its full force.

*

“Everett Beekin,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Ends Oct. 8. $28 to $49. (714) 708-5555. Running time: 2 hours.

Kandis Chappell: Sophie/Celia

Nike Doukas: Anna/Nell

Jeff Allin: Jack/Everett Beekin VI

Adam Scott: Jimmy/Ev

Tessa Auberjonois: Miri/Laurel

Carole Goldman: Ma/Waitress

Written by Richard Greenberg. Directed by Evan Yionoulis. Set design by Chris Barreca. Costumes by Candice Cain. Lighting by Donald Holder. Composer/sound design by Mike Yionoulis. Production manager Tom Aberger.