In a 1989 interview for BOMB magazine, playwright Craig Lucas said that his script for Reckless came "out of the deep experience of being an abandoned baby." He explained: "I was literally left on the backseat of a parked car in a gas station... with a little note pinned onto me."

While Lucas, now of Light in the Piazza fame, may have intended the underlying darkness and pain embedded in Reckless to slip through well-placed cracks in a comic facade, the darkness hides itself pretty well in this mostly goofy production directed by Carol Roscoe.

Reckless opens with a scene that swerves quickly into the unexpected: A bubbly suburban mom prances around her bedroom on Christmas Eve, extolling the magic of the season, when her husband interrupts to say he's hired a hit man to kill her—he realizes he should've found a different solution, but the man is five minutes away and if she'd like to live, she should hop out the bedroom window right now. The play follows the wife (played here to full naive, chipper effect by Alyssa Keene) as she flees with a passing motorist and ends up moving in with the quiet stranger, Lloyd (Carter Rodriguez, slightly menacing), and his deaf, paraplegic wife, Pootie (Megan Ahiers). Keene never veers away from her happy suburban-mom mannerisms, even as Rachel accidentally leaves a wider and wider trail of bodies in her wake—a contrast that works pretty well once you get used to it.

Though Reckless is full of death, secrets, and abandonment, the mood stays light until a surprisingly tender final scene. Rachel's farcical therapy sessions are a mockery; Pootie and Lloyd's sudden confessions of their darkest secrets land like punch lines. The pain is there, Rachel just doesn't (or can't) acknowledge it. The show feels like someone's tight, crazy smile right before standing up in church to scream curse words or picking up a computer to throw against a cubicle wall.

Everyone—including scenic designer Michael Mowery, who brings us a tricked-out set with moving walls, hidden tables, and a many-times-repurposed bed/car—is doing good work. That emotional 180 at the end, however, shows a potential of depth that could've been mined throughout.