NEW YORK (AP) -September 20, 2007 - Forget you can't go home again. Some people have enough trouble just leaving the nest the first time.

Such a dilemma faces 16-year-old Billy, the troubled teen at the center of "Scarcity," Lucy Thurber's rambunctious tale of one poor, blue-collar family's convulsions over their son's quest for a better life.

The play, which opened Thursday at off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company, won't please folks of more refined, high-tone dramatic taste. "Scarcity," like most of its characters, is a bit messy, crude and rude. But it also is compulsively watchable.

Credit the outlandish dialogue and the gutsy cast, headed by Kristen Johnston and Michael T. Weiss, who portray the boisterous parents of two very circumspect children. Mom and Dad like to drink (especially Dad), have loud sex and often shout when delivering what should be normal conversation. "The trick is kid, you've got to learn to ignore us," says Dad - not the kind of advice children should be receiving from their elders.

No wonder the offspring - super-bright Billy and his equally precocious 11-year-old sister, Rachel - seem to have a few quirks. Billy, in particular, suffers from spasms of uncontrollable violence. As played by the amazing, totally believable Jesse Eisenberg, he is an explosion waiting to happen.

When a young, pretty teacher (Maggie Kiley) takes an interest in Billy - too much as it turns out - the family begins to unravel even more. With the help of the teacher, the lad has a chance to attend a fancy prep school but first must get his parents' consent.

Billy's impending departure troubles his little sister (Meredith Brandt), a strange girl who is much more adult than the battling grown-ups around her. Rachel likes to tell fortunes and doesn't see much future in the bleak existence of her combative parents. She, too, longs to escape the confines of her life in a dreary, rural Massachusetts town.

Some of Thurber's melodramatic plot complications may be a little far-fetched, but the conversations ricochet nicely, particularly when the parents are fighting or when a cousin (Todd Weeks) and his sad-sack wife (Miriam Shor) show up to squabble on designer Walt Spangler's depressingly realistic kitchen-living room set.

Director Jackson Gay manages to corral the verbal fisticuffs when the bombast threatens to get out of control but, at the same time, she moves the plot along quite briskly.

Despite the broad strokes of the story, there is some nice shading by several of the actors. Johnston, in particular, portrays a mother who is fun-loving but savvy enough to know what her son needs to get ahead.

Still, she doesn't want anything to do with the upper-class woman who is helping him achieve those goals. Use her and get on with your life, this nonjudgmental Mom seems to be saying. Practicality trumps all in the effort to succeed.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)