Joanna Gleason and Andrew Barth Feldman Photo by Jeremy Daniel

Maybe that's because he's writing autobiographically, largely leaving out global matters; this is Harmon's Ah, Wilderness!, only a lot less affectionate. We get the autobio element at once, as Joshua (Andrew Barth Feldman)–appearing, completely gratuitously, only in tighty-whities–is sitting down to write a play when he's interrupted by Renee (Joanna Gleason), his grandmother. Gleason, elegantly gray-haired and looking rather Streepish, is a figment of his imagination, telling him to write about their family, and he says he always wanted to, but didn't know if he had her permission. "Oh, absolutely," the apparition replies, "but I want you to promise me something: Make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible." So we're off and running, with a whole passel of relatives talked about, but only three onstage.

The third is Ellen (Jeanine Serralles), his lawyer mother and Renee's daughter, as high-strung as Betsy Aidem's Marcelle was in Prayer for the French Republic. Ellen has a love-hate relationship with her mother, but mostly hate, and much of that has to do with her abiding loathing for her never-seen sister, Susan. She won't enter a room Susan's in, so when the nonagenarian Renee announces Susan is arriving from Florida for Passover, it sets off a confrontation that will end with one family member surprisingly beating up another, and seder food flying around Renee's kitchen. Then wounded feelings, and repercussions, and denouement.

But more about Renee. She's definitely a character, a sort of Auntie Mame, a doting grandma who exposes the young Joshua to movies, plays, and art well beyond his years–heck, a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit when he's nine. Up, down, up, down goes the fourth wall as the older Joshua confides family matters to us, and they are, indeed, largely bitter and vitriolic.

We don't find out much about Joshua's sisters, or his father, or grandfather, who dotes on Renee and outlives her. But we find out plenty about these three. Ellen, Joshua insists on writing in a letter to Renee, is "generous, loving, thoughtful." That threw me off, because the Ellen we see is self-centered, authoritative, sarcastic, and very judgmental. She has her matronly and daughterly moments, such as when she promises to make all arrangements for the rapidly declining Renee. But Serralles doesn't play her for sympathy, and when Ellen explodes late in the proceedings, she downright overacts.

No such problem with Gleason, whose Renee is beautifully judged, a loving grandparent with a few troubling character flaws that have devastating effects. Watch how subtly Gleason conveys Renee's age at any given flashback; she has to go from about 60 to 93, and you always know exactly where she is. Feldman's Joshua is less interesting, but he has to spend so much of his time dishing out narration, he's more of a tour guide than a character. Give him a solid scene, such as Joshua's wounded reaction to a revelation about Renee from Ellen, and he's admirable.

I have a couple of questions for Trip Cullman, the director. Why, if Joshua narrates extensively on Renee's prized matching green silk love seats, does John Lee Beatty's set design display two love seats that are neither green, silk, nor matching? Why, when Joshua tells us that Renee is barefoot, is Renee not barefoot? This may be commentary on the unreliability of memory, but Harmon's memories are pretty specific, and if we can't trust him on love seats or bedroom slippers, the whole play becomes suspect. Maybe Cullman was going for some directorial curlicue I'm not getting.

But mostly what we get is a warring family, two willful women and their son/grandson caught between them, while they kvetch about family relations and annoying character quirks and what's appropriate for little Joshua. Some compelling memories, and a couple of really rich scenes–for instance, when Renee tries to reconcile with Ellen and Ellen isn't having it, or Joshua having to lie his way out of a painful incident Renee is misremembering. There's also some political palaver, and our estimation of Renee is lifted by the knowledge that she died fretting that "the great United States is at the mercy of this [guess which] idiot."

It's rather random, though. If all Harmon wanted to do was commit his family to the stage, he succeeded–he just usually aims higher than that. His humor here is mild, as in a Joshua-Renee exchange after seeing Medea: "Would you ever kill your children?" "It would depend on the situation."

Kaye Voyce has created some cheerful costumes, mostly designer goods for Renee, and Cullman sees to it that the pace never flags.

We Had a World–cryptic title!–is diverting, and it proves, as did Sons of the Prophet a dozen seasons back, that Joanna Gleason doesn't need a musical around her to be dazzling. I just expected a little more substance from it. And, given the caustic portrait he paints of her, I'd love to know what Harmon's mother thinks of it.