Jesse Eisenberg in Scarcity.

Led by "matriarch" Martha (an excellent Kristen Johnson), the piece belongs to that new crop of plays (Pig Farm, The Butcher of Baraboo) in which every clan member's pretty much miserable, and makes love and war with equal abandon. Whereas Pig Farm was pure black comedy, and quite funny in its perverse way, and Butcher was dark comedy and not particularly good or funny, Scarcity ends up in the Eugene O'Neill middle: an uneven bleak play that tries to find moments of beauty and wit, but mostly bumps against those same walls.

The family's sad-sack home (Walt Spangler's set is all faux-wood and flea-market-reject furniture) is where Martha's former heartthrob husband, Herb (Michael T. Weiss), drinks the days away. Her cousin Louie (Todd Weeks), the local cop and former geek, is forced to drag Herb home from the bars, where he can flaunt his superiority and lust for Martha. In the meantime, the two children, Rachel and Billy (Meredith Brandt and Jesse Eisenberg) find themselves in the midst of the rubble. Billy's gifted, and wants to get transferred to a better school before he goes nuts, and Rachel's predicting everyone's future but her own, which, in her nocturnal dreams, is empty. Joining the dysfunction is Billy's teacher Ellen (Maggie Kiley), who has high hopes for her student and sexual hopes for herself. Louie's unhappy wife, Gloria (Miriam Shor), show's up briefly to be the literal butt of everyone's jokes and to try and put the family in their white trash place.

Directed in zigzag motion by Jackson Gay, the play never quite finds a focus. To achieve a slice-of-life feel, Gay abruptly moves the action from having characters scream at one another, to a quick laugh-fest, to some passion, and back again. Although it works at first, by the second act the story feels monotonous, and you long for a more traditional arch. Scenes fade out after little momentum plot-wise, and by the end you wonder if you've journeyed anywhere. The sexual twist between Ellen and Billy is the most obvious in coming, and the most farfetched in execution. Instead of a believable relationship between the two, you're left feeling as if Thurber's decided that one of the requirements of the genre is to have a perverse love story attached. It doesn't help that Kiley delivers almost every line like she's reciting it to the back row. In the naturalistic style of the play, her every comma seems pronounced.

The rest of the cast fares somewhat better: Weiss, best-known for the film version of Jeffrey and the TV series The Pretender, is in fine form as Herb, believably drunk, yet somehow sympathetic and likable. Weeks walks that fine line between annoying and misunderstood, and he handles the fence-sitting with aplomb. Shor's good in her brief appearances, and you wish she'd been integrated into the story more. Over-used are the young cast members: Eisenberg doesn't resonate the brilliance he's supposed to possess, and Brandt is asked to do too much for an actor of her age. Note to writer: Just because a child says "fuck" doesn't mean it's funny.

As for Johnston (who made her name in Third Rock from the Sun), she's an octopus onstage, hands everywhere at once, her expressions of love and distaste and sadness and hope switching faster than her lines. Despite her tough veneer and almost-cruel treatment of other characters, you never doubt her mother love. The play rightly belongs to her, and had the plot been story-lined more carefully, it would have. Instead of a profile in Roseanne and Mother Courage, you're left wondering when you'll have the chance to see her in a play as solid as her gifts.

At the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater, 336 W. 20th Street. Limited engagement, through October 14. Tickets are $55 and available by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 (ticketcentral.com).

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