On the surface, Gun Club presents itself as a dark comedy; dig a little deeper to find a tangled, edgy, and tragic play. The setting is Yakima, Washington, a small orchard town east of the Cascades. Here we find Klaus, a troubled 18 year-old boy torn between his divorced parents. When Klaus shows interest in the coolness of shooting at his father's gun club, his father seizes the opportunity at an awkward attempt at male-bonding. There Klaus meets a college-bound girl and falls for her, winning her through a series of innocuous lies.

The play skillfully depicts the failure of the boy's attempts to establish closeness with his mother and father. Both parents have found needy new soul mates and seem primarily obsessed with achieving a peaceful existence at home, which brings them into conflict with their typically disruptive teenage son. The laughs come from the way the characters continually speak their minds with a clarity you don't often get in normal speech (the subtext is right on the surface), giving the whole play a suddenness of honesty and comic edge.

The play falls "just left of realism" and at times has the flavor of a Danish Dogme film set in Seattle. Klaus' father, Max, is an unambitious, awkward, divorced man in his 40's. He is unable to establish any sort of rapport with his estranged son, the only child from his marriage to Val. She is a woman who feels deeply, but her sentiments are often obscured by her caustic temperament. We observe the deteriorating relationship between Klaus and Val, whose nurturing has shifted to her new husband -- a blocked novelist with a sleep disorder -- whom Klaus perceives as a parasite.

Klaus' trip to the gun club with Max and Max's new girlfriend, Tammy, seems at first to be brilliant medicine for an aching heart. There, the boy wins the affection of a pretty teenage girl named Heidi, despite some pretty awkward posturing on his part. Klaus also experiences a fleeting euphoria in his newfound acceptance by Max. But Klaus is ultimately crushed to find his place in his dad's heart (and home) is reserved for Tammy.

"Gun Club" is a well-told story and Holman sketches the trials of this fractured family with a wisdom we are unaccustomed to seeing in young playwrights. As often happens, a strong message gets delivered by a playwright who does not preach. The characters appear simply truthful, entertaining and quirky. While off-kilter, there are enough bits and pieces of people we all know to unfortunately make them quite believable. Gun Club presents an entertaining and believable portrait of growing up in an American suburbia full of divorced parents and disaffected youth.

Gun Club is a play in two-acts. It will be performed by Alex Knold (Klaus), Mark Hattan (Max), Dannah Chaifetz (Tammy), Irene McDonnell (Val), Kevin Hogan (Charles, the writer) and Susan O'Connor (Heidi, the teenaged girl). Set design is by Mark Symczak, lighting by Randy Glickman, sound by Tim Cramer, and costumes by Liam O'Brien.