Pancake Breakfast

The New Colony’s third-season debut follows the tribulations of the Malloy family during a Fourth of July reunion, as daughter Beatrice has gathered her divorced parents, aunt, cousins and grandfather for a seemingly innocuous bout of Independence Day fun. Staged in the cavernous Viaduct Theater, Pancake Breakfast is a quick-moving family comedy that hits many of the tropes of the dysfunctional homecoming consistently and well. Playwright Sissom populates her family with such types as the gay son, out-of-touch grandfather and autistic sibling, in a manner that’s neither exploitative nor hackneyed.

Sissom’s script doesn’t rewrite the book on the family gathering: We find a large ensemble of idiosyncratic characters; a series of family rituals that both cause and resolve conflicts; and a daughter home from New York City, intent on fixing what’s wrong with the Malloys. The comedy mined from these well-worn ingredients earns a number of deep laughs. Heavier elements are treated seriously but not onerously, allowing for nimble transit between the riotously funny and the intimate and awkward.

While the main conflict explodes clumsily in a roundtable intervention that feels unsupported by the preceding action, it delivers a satisfyingly unexpected conclusion. Individual performances are uneven, but Evan Linder as autistic 21-year-old Randy and Jack McCabe as grandpa Arlie are standouts; the brief scenes they share are a joy to watch.

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