The only way I can think of to define Lisa Loomer’s Living Out is as a morality tragicomedy. The races (in this play, Latin immigrant nannies and their Anglo employers) are ill-equipped to deal with each other, living as they do with their own pre-judgments of the other. The harshest slices from each side come from ignorance disguised as an attempt at compassion. The two central couples and their peripheral camps struggle to get communication right, and while most of the time it results in enjoyable humor, you know right from the start that the possibility of something awful always hangs over the arrangement. As presented in the claustrophobic, set-challenged CattleTrack Theatre by arizona women’s theatre company, director Debra K. Stevens has guided us to concentrate on the dialogue and relationships, making us empathize with each character despite their unintentional racism. The result is a production that asks us to extend the courtesy of dramatic license in a lot of ways, but offers a lot to think about and feel for the effort.

Those two central couples are undocumented El Salvadorans Ana (Christina Vail) and husband Bobby (Carlos Urtubey) and first time mom Nancy (Hethyre Baez) and her public defender hubby Richard (Mel Reid). Through a series of prior interviews with the strident Wallace (Lisa Fogel) and the flighty Linda (Kimberly Phelps), Ana learns to tailor her responses (and truths) to fit her acceptability to become Nancy’s nanny. To the detriment of the one of her two sons living in the US, she acquiesces to all of Nancy’s requests. Fed misinformation by fellow nannies Sandra (Jen Marsella) and Zoila (Greta Skelly), the misunderstandings grow from funny to dangerous and the situation becomes impossible.

Stevens creates a flow to the show similar to Ayckbourn’s How the Other Half Loves, having the unit set represent both Ana and Nancy’s homes and the park where mothers and nannies congregate. This continuity reveals the similarities and differences between races. She massages several scenes to dovetail with others to strong effect. Her cast is generally strong, with her central characters mostly holding their own.

Vail and Baez are great working together. Their connections and misconnections are well presented, and they each travel their separate character arcs in ways that makes the audience strongly engage. Vail is both funny and moving, nicely presenting her character’s initial hesitations, and bringing forth the tragedy very believably. Baez’s strength is in her softening of a potentially unbalanced character. Reid is infectiously funny as his Richard tries desperately to show his connection to Latinos, but his blowups and reconciliations with Baez are also believable. Urtubey’s is a lower-keyed presentation, though his choices at the end of the play justify his initial mildness.

The quartet of Fogel, Phelps, Marsella, and Skelly are nice foils to the leads. Fogel and Skelly are bigger-than-life and a hoot for that, while Phelps and Marsella both make for good counterbalances.