Sir Alan Ayckbourn is 74 years old and the author of 76 plays. (At least—he may have dashed off a few more in the time it took to write that sentence.) Ayckbourn specializes in comedies about rocky marriages and awkward living-room conversations, earning him his reputation as the playwright laureate of England's middle class. He's popular on the West End and in American regional theaters—ACT has produced 10 of his plays—but has also taken flak for writing slight, inconsequential, cotton-candy comedy. His champions say he is a research scientist of the human condition. His detractors say his sample size is too small.

Which brings us to the problem at the heart of Sugar Daddies, Ayckbourn's 2003 comedy about a credulous country girl who falls in with a suspicious benefactor: Is it possible to write a cotton-candy comedy that hinges on extreme human suffering? People have written piercing and intelligent comedies about spectacularly unfunny subjects in the past—Bertolt Brecht, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Mel Brooks come to mind—but they have always stared their nemesis right in the face, bringing us uncomfortably close to human horror so they can tear into it with jokes. Does Ayckbourn's blasé, drawing-room style have what it takes to do the same?

Sugar Daddies begins somewhere in London, sometime around Christmas, when an older man in a Santa suit (Val, played ebulliently by Seán G. Griffin) gets hit by a car. It's nothing serious, but a sweet-hearted young woman who's just moved to the city, Sasha (Emily Chisholm), invites him into her apartment to rest and call for a ride home. "Uncle Val" takes a shine to his naive new friend and becomes her benefactor, showering her with gifts and lavish nights out. Sasha's world-wise cousin (Elinor Gunn) suspects something's up with the new sugar daddy, as does the retired, one-eyed policeman who's just moved in downstairs (John Patrick Lowrie). They're right and wrong—Val is hiding something, but his designs on Sasha are not what they suspect. (Spoiler alert from here on out.)

Ayckbourn came to Seattle to direct Sugar Daddies himself, and he has coaxed precise and energetic performances out of his actors. Chisholm is particularly exact, walking us through her character's transformation from wide-eyed, vaguely hippie country mouse to entitled brat in designer clothes. Uncle Val, it turns out, is a notorious pimp who made a fortune from a lifetime of commissioned rape and murder. But he spoils Sasha unconditionally as a half-assed penance for all the lives he gobbled up and lends her a little of the power he holds over women across London. We can see it in Chisholm's manner, giddy with borrowed authority, walking around the stage as if her palms were perpetually outstretched for nice things to fall into.

Sugar Daddies is a playground for the actors—they get to lie, shout, change their minds in the middle of a sentence, and play all the broad emotions—but the performances are the best thing about it. The comedy is simple and mildly raunchy in a sitcom kind of way. ("Stiffen up," a recurring pun on arthritis and erections, gets some of the evening's biggest laughs.)

But the play's conclusion is troubling. Ayckbourn doesn't ignore Val's viciousness—we see him humiliate and terrorize a former employee—nor does he deal with it. Great comedians can find material in the worst violence and human degradation, but there's an expectation they'll bring a modicum of thoughtfulness to the subject. Ayckbourn isn't thoughtful. He conjures a demon for the sake of convenience and dismisses him, unexamined, with the flick of a pen, resolving his plot with a neat, unearned bow. If Sugar Daddies were just another bedroom farce, that bow would simply be cheap. But, in this case, it feels cheapening.