'Somewhere Fun' review: Not so much

In 2008, Jenny Schwartz arrived, as if fully formed, on the must-see list of gifted new writers. "God's Ear" was both a family drama about grief and a linguistic adventure in which Schwartz exploited and commented on the inadequacies of everyday language when dealing with the loss of a child.

In her latest work, "Somewhere Fun," Schwartz broadens her lens to include several overlapping stories and, alas, weakens the power of her deeply-original voice with too much nonsensical wordplay.

On the other hand, she and director Anne Kauffman have created a bright offbeat abstraction, a privileged New York world of wonderfully self-involved characters, especially women, who are absurd and joyful and full of terrible sorrow. This includes the deliciously dry Kathleen Chalfant as a dying but superior matriarch who declares such twisted bromides as, "Everything happens for a reason, except anal cancer." Kate Mulgrew is virtuosic as a motormouth real-estate agent who means it when she exclaims, "I'm melting."

But pairings of similar words -- worrier/warrior, furry/fury, allergic/arthritic -- get annoying instead of meaningful with frequent repetition. It's hard to appreciate these interesting characters when you also wish they'd shut up.

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